Mere Anarchy
by greengrass1914
Summary: Revan searches for the coming Darkness while the Exile searches for redemption. A postKotor 2 story featuring an LSF Revan, an LSF Exile, Carth, and other K1 and K2 characters. Sequel to The Widening Gyre. COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

_Mere Anarchy is the sequel to The Widening Gyre, a novella-length bridge between Kotor 1 and 2. You can find it and my other in-universe stories on my author page. Briefly, at the end of The Widening Gyre, Carth was promoted to Admiral and Mission signed on to the Telos Reconstruction Project. Case, former Lord of the Sith, set out for the Unknown Regions to battle the coming Darkness with Dustil, her accidental Padawan. Mere Anarchy begins five years after The Widening Gyre and one year after Kotor 2._

**PROLOGUE**

Dustil couldn't see the shapes clearly in the dim light, but he knew what they were. They reeked of Darkness, and their hisses spoke seductively of the freedom given by hate. They wanted them, and now they finally had their chance.

Dustil's breath came harshly to his mouth. The air on this planet was thin and gritty, like breathing in metal shavings with every gasp. His rebreather mask had given out days ago, and he had to make do with a piece of his cloak wrapped across his nose and mouth. He backed up slowly, holding his green blade toward the shadows moving toward them. He stopped when he felt a familiar solidity behind him.

"Ready for this?" Case asked. Dustil turned his head to the side and saw the glow of her yellow blade before her. It bled a small cylinder of brightness into the shadows around them.

"You know there's too many of them, right?" he asked, forcing some brave banter in spite of the clenching in his gut. He didn't want to die today.

"Absolutely." Dustil couldn't see her face, but he knew she'd be grinning fiercely, daring the shadows to move first.

One of the shadows took up a keening wail, high pitched and piercing. One by one the others took up the call, and soon the air echoed with the racket. Then the front line swept toward them and the fight was at hand.

Dustil fell into a rhythm of long practice with Case, slashing and parrying thrusts with his blade, ducking under hers when it came his way. He discovered that the shadows weren't any more discernable when they were close up—something about them, some trick of the light or the Force, blurred them into a shape of billowing cloak and Darkness. But they were solid enough when his blade slashed through them. They shrieked when they died, and collapsed into a pile of dark cloth.

Dustil tossed his blade to his left hand and threw his right arm in the air. Lightning burst in a nova around them, killing twenty of the shadows instantly and pushing the ones behind them back, chattering in fear. He panted, smelling ozone and burnt flesh. He felt a coolness from behind and knew Case was lending him Force strength to replace the reserves lost in the Nova. A quick thanks was all he had time for before they were fighting the next wave.

He wasn't sure how long it went on that way, hand-to-hand fighting until he or Case had enough strength to blow them back with the Force, then barely a moment to recover before they were fighting again. The waves of shadows never seemed to diminish. It could have been hours, or days. His blade was heavy in his hands, his legs slow. He knew they couldn't go on much longer.

Then, without warning, the shadows stopped. Dustil paused warily, not daring to lower his blade. They were still there, just beyond the range of their Force attacks, but they did not approach. Dustil reached for Case through their bond and felt her puzzlement. "What's up?" he whispered.

In response, the shadows took up another round of hissing. Case cocked her head, listening, and Dustil knew she was trying to understand their meaning through the Force. Dustil took the opportunity to assess his physical state—no major wounds, just numerous cuts from what seemed to be metal blades. Exhaustion numbed his arms, legs, every part of him, and he didn't have the Force reserves to do anything about it. They had been out of kolto for a year, and Dustil had yet to master more than the most rudimentary Force Heal.

Case gasped, jerking him back to the present. "What? What is it?" he asked urgently. Their bond pulsed with barely repressed fear.

"It's here," she whispered. "Get your blade up!"

Dustil had no idea what she was talking about, but he didn't fool around when she took that tone. He raised his blade and looked alertly outward, right hand glowing with Lightning.

The shadows before them parted and a figure strode toward them. Dustil stumbled backward from the palpable Darkness the shape projected. He could hardly see it, like it was pulling the dim light into itself. It hissed, and Dustil had to stop himself from putting his hands over his ears. With the last of his Force reserves, he sent a bolt of Lightning toward the figure, but it dissipated without ever touching the Darkness. The figure didn't so much as glance at him. It hissed again at Case.

"No!" Case shouted next to him. "You cannot have us both."

Dustil looked at her sharply, but she was glaring at the creature before them. "What are you doing?" he whispered.

The creature hissed again, and Dustil thought he heard a smile in the sound.

Case laughed without humor. "You can try, but why lose so many of your own? You can have me now, without a fight."

He felt desperately toward their bond, but she was blocking him. "No, Case! You can't!"

She looked at him then, dark eyes hard. "We're both going to die if I don't do this. They will let you live if I go with them."

"No! This wasn't our deal!" He grabbed Case's arm and tried to pull her in the direction of their ship, but she pulled a vibroknife from her belt and drove it downward into his thigh. He shouted and dropped to the ground.

Case looked down at him and he felt a trickle of Heal through their bond, just enough to keep him from going into shock. "You can't come with me, Dustil," she said flatly. "That's the deal." She straightened her shoulders and walked into the shadows.

"Case!" he shouted. He forced himself to his feet, but his injured leg betrayed him and he stumbled back to the ground. He reached for her through their bond, felt her fear and sadness. He shouted her name again, using all of his strength to push himself to his knees.

Only silence greeted his call.


	2. Chapter 1

**ONE**

Pellek Tran concentrated only on the angle of her blade as she slashed through the jungle. Upper left to lower right, spin to upper right, down to lower left. Spin back to upper left and repeat. Keeping the pattern was harder than it looked because of the dangling vines and low roots that caught at her clothing and feet. Sweat dripped down her neck and collected unpleasantly in the small of her back.

"Lovely technique, Pel. If the Jedi needed a lightsaber form for brush clearing, I'm sure they would name it after you."

"Bugger off, Atton." She didn't even look in his direction, just kept her eyes on her work. The clearing was supposed to be only meters away.

Atton jumped into her path, and she jerked her blade away out of habit. The pilot stood there with his arms crossed, a smirk on his face. Pellek sighed. "What?" she asked finally.

"We've been out here for days. What are we doing?"

"I told you, some kind of monster attacked a team of Queen Talia's explorers. She wants to colonize Dxun, but she can't get anyone to volunteer because of the attack." She pushed past him and started slashing toward the clearing again.

Atton fell in behind her. "I can think of someone who wouldn't want Talia poking around on the planet," he began.

"It's not Mandalore. I already asked him. Hey, I know," she said with false cheer, "why don't you go bother him for a while? His camp is only ten klicks from here."

"Please. Mandalore wouldn't see me if I brought him forty virgins for his clan." He pushed ahead of her again. "Pel, seriously. When we left Malachor V, I didn't exactly think we'd be wandering around for a year on the Outer Rim, doing dirty work for whoever can pay us."

"_We're_ not doing anything. _I_ am. _You_ can leave whenever you want."

Atton's eyes narrowed. "Have it your way, then," he said stiffly, and disappeared into the brush ahead of her.

Pellek sighed and went back to her work. Things had been rocky with Atton for the last several weeks. He was bored, maybe, or neglected. She'd spent the better part of the year moving from odd job to odd job, doing work for anyone who needed the skills of an exiled Jedi. She earned enough for beer and bread and stayed in one place just long enough to buy fuel to get to the next. And if she was too drunk or tired at the end of the day to think about things, then all the better.

Pellek suddenly had nothing left to slash and stumbled into a wide clearing. Yellow light trickled through the trees and painted the clearing pale green. She extinguished her blade and sat down on a warm flat rock to take several long pulls from her canteen. She could cure a hangover with the Force, but only water cured dehydration.

"Hello, General," a soft voice said.

Pellek looked up and grinned at the figure entering the clearing. "Bao-Dur!" She didn't see him very often these days. "You're not the monster attacking explorers, are you?"

His look told her he was not, and was not amused by the suggestion. Pellek was suddenly embarrassed by his calm gaze, and tore her eyes away. She sighed. "What do you want, Bao-Dur? Atton been complaining to you about the hours we're working?"

"Atton doesn't come to me, you know that. I'm here about you."

She took another pull of water and wished it was something stronger. "Oh, yeah? Let me guess how it'll go." She mocked his soft tones. "General, I'm worried about you. You used to be such a good little Jedi, but you haven't been the same since your murderous rampage on Malachor V." Pellek laughed hollowly at her own words just to counter the quiet disapproval from the Zabrak.

Bao-Dur didn't rise to her bait. "What about Revan, General? Have you found any trace of her?"

The name alone made Pellek grit her teeth. Redeemed Revan, feared and loved by the Council, envied and respected by Kreia, pined over by Fleet heroes and Mandalorian warlords. Yes, Revan got all the second chances. She shrugged. "Haven't seen her. Unless, of course, she's that monster Talia has me looking for."

"Have you been looking? You told the Admiral you would, remember?"

"I told the Admiral I'd pass along a message if I saw her, but I haven't seen her, so I can't have passed along the message. I'm not a bounty hunter. If Mira were here—" Pellek choked on the words. It was no good wishing for what she couldn't have.

Bao-Dur crouched in front of her where she couldn't avoid looking at him. His dark eyes were creased with worry. "It's not your fault," he said quietly, urgently. "All three of us chose to go down to the planet. What happened was because of what _we_ chose to do." He put his hands over her knees. "Your aura used to be so blue, General. When you showed me the Force, I remember that it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. All of the color has gone out of it now, like the sky before a storm, and I'm worried about you. Atton and I both are."

Pellek looked at the Zabrak for a long moment. She wanted to believe him, wanted him to be right, but the hole in her where the Force lived told her otherwise. She jumped up and walked through him to get away. She made her voice hard. "I don't need the pity of a couple of ghosts, thanks."

She didn't hear a response, and when she turned, Bao-Dur had disappeared. Pellek took a deep, shuddering breath. It was better this way, better not to have the ghosts of her dead friends trailing her around, reminding her that she was still alive. It was better.

A rustle came from the brush before her, and Pellek quickly ignited her blade. Talia's men hadn't survived to describe the monster, but the group sent to find them said their bodies were mangled and broken, like it had shaken them in its teeth to kill them. She had no idea what to expect. "Come out!" she shouted. She felt for the creature with the Force and was shocked by the wordless anger and fear the creature projected. It didn't feel like an animal—

She was suddenly knocked backward across the clearing and landed with a crash against the heavy vines. She gasped to get her breath back and slowly got to her feet, this time projecting a shield against Force attacks. No animal could attack like that.

A man stumbled into the clearing. He was dirty, clothes torn and bloody in several places, beard at least a few weeks long. His eyes were wild.

Pellek lowered her blade a fraction. "Do you need help?" The man threw his hand toward her in response and she felt a Whirlwind gust against the edge of her shield. It was powerful, but her shield held.

The man blinked, then shook his head and yanked something from his belt. A brilliant green blade appeared and he stalked toward her slowly, like she was prey. Pellek felt a ripple of fear go through her. This was no wild Force-user, but a Jedi or Sith, and judging by the way he was holding his saber, well-trained. "I don't want to hurt you," she called. "I'm a Jedi—let me help you."

The man grinned ferally, and Pellek was suddenly reminded of someone. "I want your ship, Jedi," he growled, voice rough like he hadn't used it recently. "You're going to take me there and unlock the nav system."

Pellek found herself agreeing with him for just a second before jerking her mind clear of his Persuasion. The fear in her chest got stronger—this man was powerful, and Pellek had depleted her Force reserves curing her hangover this morning. She wasn't sure she was in good enough shape to beat him one on one—she'd have to find another way to escape. She let her blade sag and blinked slowly. "I'll take you to my ship," she said dazedly, like his Persuasion had been effective.

To his credit, the man didn't drop his guard. He smiled just a fraction. "I thought you would," he said. He gestured out of the clearing with his blade. "Let's go."

Pellek extinguished her blade and put it in her bag, reaching as she did so for the restraining collar she had brought with her. Pellek let him approach and take her by the arm. The man was younger than she had first thought, perhaps not yet twenty-five. She let him push her out of the clearing, then pretended to stumble. He reached to catch her and she swung toward him, collar in hand.

He shouted and ducked, Pushing her away from him. He strode toward her with blade up, eyes flashing yellow. Pellek scrambled backward.

"Hey, haven't I seen you before?" a voice asked behind the man. Atton stood across the clearing, arms crossed against his chest. The man snapped his head around, and that was all the opening Pellek needed. She Boosted herself to him and shoved the collar around his neck. It locked with a click and the man dropped to the ground. He tried to throw Lightning toward her, but it bled through his fingers and trickled harmlessly into the soil. He groaned and put a hand to his head.

Pellek caught her breath. "Thanks," she said to Atton.

He smirked at her. "I guess _you_ needed _my_ help after all." He strolled over to the man, who was now kneeling on the grass, hand outstretched to keep himself upright. Atton peered down at him. "I was serious, though. I've seen this kid somewhere."

The man looked up at Atton. "You're—you're not real," he mumbled drunkenly. He tugged futilely at the collar around his neck, then reached out and put his hand straight through Atton. "Just a ghost."

Atton grinned and mimed patting the man on the head. "Just as real as any living person, kid. Don't let her tell you I'm not."

Pellek had gotten the restraining collar on Nar Shaddaa two jobs ago and knew it was built to keep Jedi from using the Force in addition to physically restraining them. Still, she carefully deactivated the man's green blade and stowed it securely in her pack. She kept hers out and between them as she knelt before him. His eyes had returned to a normal dark color and were now heavily glazed. "What's your name?" she asked sternly.

He blinked at her for several moments while her words got through the fog created by the collar. "Dustil," he slurred finally. "Dustil Onasi."

* * *

Any hope of getting the twins to stay down for their nap was shattered when the doorchime sounded. Caele shrieked and ran for the door while Tar, a little more restrained than his sister, tottered behind her. Mission sighed, but she should have known better than to leave the doorchime on audio when she was trying to get the twins down. Whether it was Kaxtrax coming by to chat or more anomalous readings from the polar region, any issue with the Telos Reconstruction Project seemed to find its way to her door.

She hauled the twins back by their shirts and flipped on the external viewer. Citadel Station was safe enough, but she'd been more careful since the Exile came through last year and brought all that Sith trouble with her. Her concern evaporated, though, when she saw who was standing in the doorway. "Carth! Come in!"

Carth didn't get two meters into the room before he was accosted around the legs by the twins. "Grampa Onasi! Grampa Onasi!" they cried. Without bothering to drop his pack, Carth swept the two toddlers into his arms and looked at them gravely.

"Well, now, who are these two monsters?" he asked, winking over their heads at Mission.

"It's Caele!" the little girl giggled. Tar didn't say anything, just grinned toothily.

Carth frowned. "Caele and Tar? I don't know—you two are awfully big to be Caele and Tar. Maybe a monster is just pretending to be the twins."

Tar took his head seriously. "No, Grampa. No monster."

"Hmm. I guess there's only one way to tell—" Carth flipped the children upside down and dangled them a few centimeters from the ground. They shrieked in delight, faces turning red. Carth lowered them carefully to the floor. "No, I think you're the twins, after all. Unless we need the tickle test—"

"No!" They tottered behind Mission's legs, giggling. In a smooth move, Mission picked up both twins and carried them into their bedroom. "Okay, you two, even monsters need naps." They were bouncing up and down excitedly in their beds when she closed the door and set the monitor.

She came back out to the living area and flopped down on the couch. "Whew! They might not sleep, but they'll at least stay in their beds for a little while."

Carth set his pack down but chose a plasynth chair instead of the couch, indicating his dusty flight jacket and pants. He grinned toward the twins' bedroom. "Those two are a handful, Mission—they weren't nearly as mobile last time I saw them."

She shook her head ruefully. "No kidding. It's like they figured out how to run before learning to walk. And two of them! When the orphanage said we had to take both or neither, Jan and I had no idea it was going be four times the work."

"I still think you're too young for all this," he said sternly, but there was a hint of a smile around his eyes. It had been an actual argument once, but now it was just a familiar basis for banter.

She grinned and played her part. "You just can't stand the fact that you're an old grandfather now."

"Old! Just wait until you're forty-four—you won't be telling me you're old."

"No, but you'll be ancient by then." She smiled up at him. It was just a game they played—Mission knew that in spite of some creeping gray around his temples, Carth was every bit as quick with his blasters as he had been when she'd met him on Taris nearly six years ago. "Any luck?" she asked.

Carth's smiled faded and he shrugged. "No. The Exile is still doing mercenary work around the Rim. My sources haven't heard any significant chatter from the Unknown Regions in months." He grinned but Mission could see that it was forced. "One of these days, someone from the High Command is going to ask me why I spend all of my vacation time trolling the Rim in a beat-up smuggler ship."

"Do you have any time left? Jan's squadron is on a local tour this fourmonth, so he's home every few days. We'd love to see you, and of course the kids would be thrilled." Mission knew Carth was fine most of the time—his work with the Fleet kept him busy, and she and Jan monopolized him whenever they could. But something had changed in the last six months, and Mission didn't like the way he looked when he came back from another fruitless search for Case and Dustil. It was like a little bit of hope died every time.

He was already shaking his head. "No, I should get back to Coruscant. We have that readiness project that I'm—" his wrist comm beeped. He flipped the Accept to audio only. "Onasi here."

A tinny voice came through the comm. "Private Rog of the TSF, sir. I'm sorry to bother you, but—" he trailed off.

"But what, Private?" Carth asked impatiently.

"The _Ebon Hawk_, sir. It emerged into Telos space an hour ago and a Pellek Tran is in Commander Dol Grenn's office. I knew you had docked, sir, and I thought you might like to know."

Carth leapt to his feet. "I'll be there in five minutes. Onasi out."

The hope that had reappeared on Carth's face was almost painful in its earnestness. Mission didn't think much of the Exile and her ragged crew—surely Case's crew hadn't looked that way?—and from Carth's stories, she knew he didn't think much of her, either. Apparently, she'd been some kind of general in the Mandalorian Wars. She'd promised to look for Case, though, and her arrival could mean only one thing.

"She's found something," Mission whispered.

Carth picked up his pack and she saw him check his holsters out of habit. "Lock your door after I leave," he said.

Mission realized suddenly that she'd expected to go with him, like in the old days. But then she heard someone—probably Caele—bouncing on the bed and smiled ruefully. These weren't the old days anymore. "You be careful, too, old man. Who knows what scruffy characters the Exile brought with her this time?" The bouncing and giggling got louder. "I should stop whatever's going on in that bedroom. Comm me later and tell me what she says, okay?"

Carth practically ran out of the door.


	3. Chapter 2

**TWO**

Carth forced himself to walk at a measured pace from the residential sector to the station commander's office. It wouldn't do for the local Admiral to be tearing though the station like the Sith were attacking. He did, however, take every shortcut he knew and wave off an earnest young officer who wanted to show him some paperwork. The Exile had to—_had to_—know something about Case and Dustil. Pellek Tran wouldn't have returned otherwise.

In truth, he had begun to think that she wasn't going to return at all. His network had kept watch on Pellek's activities since she left Citadel Station a year ago to fight Darth Traya on Malachor V. She had defeated Traya, but at the cost of three of her companions—the ex-Sith assassin, the Zabrak, and the bounty hunter had died on the surface of the dead planet. From what Carth could piece together from his sources, it had been Canderous—Mandalore now—who pulled the Exile from the ruins of Malachor and saved her life. Carth's spies soon reported that she had sent her remaining crew away and taken up mercenary work on the Rim when she wasn't drinking or bedding the best available woman. Carth had just about written her off as another dead end.

Carth had managed to keep decent tabs on Case and Dustil for the first several years after they left for the Unknown Regions. His spies would lose track of them for a while, then pick up a story about two Jedi cleaning out a corrupt government, or a mysterious pair living in a cave near a planet's ancient ruins. Then the reports became more and more sporadic, until finally they stopped altogether. The last thing Carth's sources discovered was that Case and Dustil had found something and were heading for a remote planet orbiting an ancient star. That had been six months ago, and Carth was about ready to take off after them, Fleet commission be damned.

Never, not once in five years, had he received a message from Case or Dustil directly. Some days, he couldn't keep the anger inside its box. But now, after months of fear gnawing at his stomach and keeping him awake at night, hope had reappeared. Carth took a deep breath and palmed open the door.

Commander Dol Grenn was speaking urgently to the Exile. They both looked up when he entered, and Grenn walked toward him, hand extended in greeting. "Admiral, it's good to see you again. It's a lucky coincidence that you happened to be on the station when Jedi Tran arrived." The man kept shooting nervous glances at the closed conference room adjoining his office.

Carth shook his hand out of habit but spoke over the man's shoulder to Pellek. "Well? What do you know?" The words came out in his "command" voice, the one that got soldiers moving without argument.

Nonetheless, the Jedi didn't seem to hear him at first, like she was listening to someone else in the room. But then she shook her head and finally looked at him. "No pleasantries, Admiral? But I guess you've never been interested in _my_ health, have you?"

Carth crossed his arms and didn't respond. He and the Exile had no love for each other—she had gotten a lot of his friends killed under her command in the Mandalorian Wars—but he wasn't going to rise to her bait.

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. I haven't found Revan, but someone claiming to be your son tried to kill me a week ago."

"Dustil? Where is he? Is he all right?" he demanded. He saw Grenn eyeing the conference room door again, and Carth realized he must be in there. If she had hurt his son—

"Admiral, wait!" Grenn protested, but Carth ignored him and palmed open the door.

The small room was empty except for one chair and the holoboard against the far wall. Dustil was slumped down in the chair, eyes half open and head hanging low. He was wearing tattered clothing and a metal collar around his neck.

"What the hell have you done to him?" he asked. The fear in his chest was almost paralyzing, but he walked over to his son and kneeled in front of him. The boy—man—didn't even glance up. The collar gave off an unpleasant electronic hum.

Grenn piped up. "Admiral, it's for his own safety. Jedi Tran tells me he was quite agitated—"

"Get it off of him," he said flatly.

"I really recommend that you don't—" Grenn protested from the doorway.

"I said, _get it off_." Carth repeated, his voice low and hard.

Pellek hit a button on a datapad and the metal collar fell in two. Dustil blinked slowly and looked up. Carth let out a sigh of relief.

Then, without warning, Dustil snapped out a hand and Carth felt himself flung backward into the thin plasteel wall. Dustil leapt to his feet and held his open palm like a ward in front of him. He looked around wildly. "Where is she?" he hissed.

Carth pushed himself upright. Pellek had been thrown into the next room and Grenn was sprawled in the doorwary. "Dustil, it's me, you're safe—" he started.

Dustil looked past him without recognition. His eyes were yellow. He made a fist and Grenn gagged. The station commander scuttled back against the wall, hands clawing at the invisible bands crushing his throat.

Carth leapt to his feet, blaster out. Pellek ran into the room with her lightsaber blazing but stopped short at the scene before her.

"Drop your weapons, or he dies," Dustil said.

Grenn's eyes were rolling back in his head. In an oddly detatched thought, Carth realized with a curious mix of relief and guilt that he still couldn't fire on his son. He holstered his blaster and put his hands slowly in the air. After a tense moment, Pellek did the same. Dustil made no move to unclench his fist, however. "Take me to a ship," he growled.

"Enough of this!" a new voice shouted, and Dustil crashed backward into the wall. Grenn gasped painfully for air.

Bastila Shan strode into the room, a blue Force Shield crackling around her. With a gesture, she picked Dustil up and held him a meter off the ground. "Look at who you're fighting, Dustil!" she commanded.

Dustil glanced over and blinked a few times, his eyes slowly darkening to brown. He visibly paled. "Father?" he whispered.

"Everyone's okay, Dustil, it's fine," Carth said, his voice almost normal. His stomach was clenched—what the hell had happened to his son? And where was Case?

Bastila lowered Dustil to the ground. "Keep yourself calm, Jedi," she said warningly, hand on her lightsaber hilt. The woman turned to Carth and smiled. "Admiral, it's a pleasure to see you." Her cheerful tone was wildly incongruous to the tension and confusion rippling through the room. Carth wouldn't have been more surprised if Malak had walked through that door.

Pellek managed words first and echoed his thoughts. "I heard you were dead!" she exclaimed.

Bastila inclined her head. "I'm pleased to see that my ruse was successful," she said in her lilting accent. She turned to Grenn, who had picked himself up and only looked a little pale. "I believe there is much to discuss. Would you be so kind as to show us to a more private room, one with perhaps a few more chairs?"

"Er, yes, of course, Master Jedi. Please use my office," Grenn said, ushering them back into the room.

"We will need privacy, Commander. Will you see that the four of us are not disturbed?" Bastila asked.

"Oh, of course, of course. Please take as long as you need. I'll be, er, elsewhere. Good day, Admiral, Masters." Grenn backed out of the room, looking like a man who had just escaped his own execution.

Carth couldn't help but envy him.

* * *

Pellek made a show of nonchalance, stretching her legs out from her chair and folding her arms across her chest. In truth, she was exhausted, having run non-stop back from the far end of the Rim to get Onasi's boy back before he worked himself out of the collar. She hadn't expected the Admiral to actually be on the station—she was going to just leave the boy with Dol Grenn and go back to collect her fee from Talia. But now here she was, sitting in council with Bastila Shan, of all people, and it didn't look like she'd be getting a nap anytime soon.

Bastila was going on about how she escaped the Jedi massacre on Katarr, something about being in seclusion on Coruscant and Master Vrook asking her to come to Dantooine at the last moment. Pellek mostly tuned it out. Bastila had barely started her padawan training when Pellek left to join Revan and Malak in the Mandalorian Wars. The girl had been far too young to join them, but to hear her tell it afterward, she had pleaded with all of them not to defy the will of the Council. Sanctimonious schutta. Pellek had heard that Bastila had been part of the battle for the Star Forge with Revan, and she could only hope the woman had learned a little something about real life along the way.

"Hey, the Jedi princess there could teach Kreia a thing or two about long, boring lectures," Atton whispered in her ear.

Pellek glanced over to see the scoundrel glowing faintly beside her. "Bastila and Dustil can hear you, you know," she whispered back.

Atton grinned. "Nah, not unless I want them to. But they can hear _you_ talking to thin air."

Everyone in the room was staring at her. Dustil, who had seen Atton already, looked amused, while Bastila and Carth just looked suspicious.

"Will somebody tell me what the hell is going on here?" Carth asked. "Bastila, I respect you, but I'm running out of patience. I want to know what the hell just happened in that conference room, and I want to know what's happened to Case." He turned to Dustil. "Where is she?"

Dustil looked panicked for a moment, eyes darting toward the door. He shook his head. "I don't know. I know where we were, but—"

"Well, you were with her, weren't you? What happened? Where is she?" Carth demanded, his voice raising with each question. Pellek could see Dustil starting to pant, trapped by his father's accusing stare. The young man's aura, blue-gray, flickered red around the edge. Pellek put her hand on her lightsaber hilt.

"Dustil," Bastila said quietly, "you must control yourself." The words were weighted with the Force.

"We can always put the collar back on him," Pellek drawled. She could feel Carth's dark glare on her.

"You are not being helpful," Bastila told her, gaze still locked on Dustil.

"Yeah, no kidding, Pel," Atton said. "If the Admiral had the Force, I'm pretty sure you'd just be a pile of ash by now."

"No, she's right," Dustil said. He took several deep breaths and pressed his hands hard against his eyes. His aura settled back to a light slate color. "I'm all right now."

The tension in the room dropped several degrees. Bastila nodded approvingly and tried to regain control of the meeting. "Perhaps you should tell us how you came to arrive here," she said to him.

Dustil shook his head. "There's no time for long stories. Case and I were in the Unknown Regions, we found the True Sith, and she was captured. I've been—"

"Captured?" Carth asked. "How long ago?"

"Weeks. I got back to our ship but ran out of fuel near Onderon. I was trying to get another ship when that woman and her pet ghost caught me."

"Hey, who're you calling a pet, padawan?" Atton growled. Dustil flicked his eyes over to him but didn't respond. Pellek frowned. Just how far into the Unknown Regions were Dustil and Revan, anyway? She'd never heard of any hyperspace trip taking weeks.

"Why did you come back to known space?" Carth asked sharply, interrupting her train of thought. "You just left her out there by herself?"

"I was coming back for help!" Dustil protested. "You weren't there—there were hundreds of them. I thought if I could find Master Jolee, or Master Kavar, we could go back and rescue her."

Pellek sighed. "They're both dead. All the Masters are now." _Three because of me_, she reminded herself cruelly.

Carth stood, apparently having had enough of all the talking. "My ship is ready to go. We can finish this conversation on the way back out there."

"I will come with you," Bastila said firmly.

Carth shook his head. "Sorry, sister, but my ship's barely big enough for two."

"Then we will take the _Ebon Hawk_," she replied.

Pellek, already busy planning her route back to Onderon, jerked her head up at Bastila's words. "What? Oh, hell, no. I don't work for you or the Admiral, never have, and I'm not going off on a fool's mission to find Revan. Hell, we don't even know if she's alive."

"She's alive," Dustil said quietly, his eyes on the floor. He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's dark, and she's afraid and in pain, but she's alive." He brought his eyes up to her. "We're going to need all the Force powers we can get."

Pellek was already shaking her head. "No way." She was not doing this again. Too many people had already died because of her—she was a hole in the Force, and everything she touched became corrupted.

"General," a soft voice said beside her.

Pellek covered her eyes with her hands. "No, don't ask. Bao-Dur, please don't ask—"

"They need you, General," he said. "And you need this."

Pellek looked up finally at the faint glow from her friend. Atton was standing beside the Zabrak. He shrugged. "The one-armed-wonder's right, Pel. Isn't this what we've been waiting for?"

Pellek looked from her friends to the rest of the room. Bastila was staring at the ghosts, mouth open like she wanted to comment but couldn't think what to say. Carth was frowning at Pellek, no doubt wondering why she was talking to empty space. The line of his jaw was tense, and she could tell he was already tired of waiting on her equivocation. Dustil kept wiping his hands on his pants like he couldn't find another place for them.

"General," Bao-Dur prompted.

Pellek threw up her hands. "Fine! Fine, I'll go with you." Bao-Dur smiled and disappeared.

She paced along one side of the office while Carth put in a call to someone at the High Command and Bastila consulted with Dustil about—Jedi things, she guessed.

Atton sidled up to her. "I guess I'd better tag along in case you run into trouble, huh, babe? You never know when you'll need a Force ghost to get you out of a jam."

She smiled weakly at him and rubbed her forehead where a headache was starting. It was like the beginning of a bad joke—a jittery padawan, an anxious admiral, a haughty Jedi, and a wisecracking ghost, all looking for a missing Sith Lord on a planet full of Sith. And there was something else, just a sliver of something that made her think that Dustil hadn't told them everything about this mission. She didn't know what it was, but she had a bad feeling about it.

Hell, she had a bad feeling about the whole trip. Pellek checked her lightsaber, rearranged her pack, and took a deep breath. She only hoped this adventure would turn out better than her last one.


	4. Chapter 3

**THREE**

Dustil was running, stumbling, really, catching himself on his hands so often that they were torn and bleeding. The only sound he could hear was the high-pitched wheezing from his lungs. He couldn't see what was behind him, but he knew it was faster than he was. He pulled desperately at the Force to Boost himself forward, but he was down to his last reserves. He stuttered to regular speed and found himself two meters from the edge of a chasm. Dustil flung himself backward and slid to a stop with his heels hanging over the edge. He looked in both directions, but the chasm stretched out as far as he could see.

There was nowhere to go. Dustil got unsteadily to his feet and yanked his lightsaber from his belt. Its green glow looked weak against the gloom. "Show yourself!" he shouted.

The seconds ticked by, and then a black shape leapt toward him. Dustil shouted and raised his blade, but the shape crashed into him. He stumbled backward, lost his balance—

—and felt nothing but air underneath him as he began to fall.

Dustil snapped open his eyes, heart pounding loudly in his ears, to see the gray metal ceiling of the _Ebon Hawk_ above him. He caught his breath. It had been a dream, at least this time.

He wasn't sure how long he had spent trying to follow Case, but at some point he had started back toward the ship. It was slow going because of the knife wound in his leg. He had been panicked, maybe a little delirious, but he was sure something had started stalking him. He had run and run and eventually hit the chasm.

That was where things got fuzzy. He remembered the shape leaping at him, and he dreamed the sick feeling of falling every night, but he didn't actually _remember_ falling. He didn't remember anything, in fact, until he woke up on his ship with his leg healed and his lightsaber in his hand.

He had lost three weeks, somehow, and that terrified him.

Dustil sat up slowly and scrubbed his hands across his face. He hadn't told anyone about the missing time—how could he explain it? He told them he had blown his navicomputer and made several bad hyperspace jumps before finally reaching Onderon. The Jedi his father called the Exile kept looking at him suspiciously, but so far no one had questioned his story.

What really terrified him about the missing time, though, was that he had also lost time on Onderon, where the Exile told him he had attacked her and possibly killed three men. And he had lost time on Citadel Station, where Bastila told him he had Force Choked Dol Grenn nearly to unconsciousness. He had passed off those two outbursts as stress from escaping the True Sith, but he didn't think anyone really believed him. They were letting it go so he could lead them back to Case. But why the hell couldn't he remember?

His father had spent the first week of their trip interrogating him about where they had been, how many enemies he expected, their weaponry, their strengths and weaknesses. Dustil did the best he could, but he didn't know enough to satisfy his father. Carth wanted to make a battle plan, something organized and predictive, but he'd finally given up. They would have to approach the enemy as they found it. Carth had only asked him one question about Case—was she all right when he last saw her—in the entire time they had been together. Dustil could feel the fear and frustration that Carth was compressing inside of him, and it only added to the general sense of foreboding that permeated the _Ebon Hawk_.

Dustil pushed down the unease that rose in his throat by feeling through the Force for everyone on the ship. His father was in the cockpit, Bastila Shan was in the other quarters, and Pellek Tran was in the cargo hold. There was a faint blip near her, which meant one of her ghosts was with her. Out of habit, Dustil let his mind wander toward the Force Bond that he had with Case, the tiny filament in the Force that he had accidentally created between them five years ago. He felt her familiar grayish aura and then suddenly, he was consumed by fear, panic reaching around his throat and choking him. He was trapped, he was trapped—

The door to his quarters banged open and Bastila stood illuminated in the doorframe. Her eyes were wide. "Dustil, what is it?"

Dustil clenched his eyes shut and forced up a heavy block against his connection to Case. The panic in his head receded. It was Case's fear, of course, and it was all he could do to keep it at bay. As if he didn't have enough to worry about.

Dustil laughed thinly and hauled himself to his feet. "Nothing unusual, Jedi Shan," he said, "I'm just losing my mind, that's all." They were still three days from the Sith planet, and Dustil wasn't sure he could control Case's panic long enough to get there. It was getting worse the closer they got, like a thousand bees in his head.

Bastila frowned at him. "You are Bonded to her." It was not a question.

Dustil looked at the woman closely. She was older than him, though not by more than a few years. She looked better now than she usually did, because her hair was disheveled and falling out of the prim tails she kept it in. He must have woken her up.

She noticed him staring and cleared her throat, yanking her brown Jedi robes into place around her slim figure. "I beg your pardon, Padawan," she huffed.

Dustil grinned lazily. "Case said you used to wear something besides Jedi robes. I hear it was pretty tight—"

"My apparel is not a proper topic of discussion among Jedi," she said haughtily. "Though I suppose your Master was never one for proper behavior."

"Hey, who the hell are you to judge her?" Dustil snapped. "She was out saving the Galaxy while you were learning to float datapads at the Academy."

"The Jedi Code is not optional, Padawan. It is what keeps us from falling to the Dark Side," Bastila said.

Dustil sneered at her. "Right, and it worked so well for all three of us, didn't it?"

Bastila flushed pink and tightened her lips. The sudden shame in her eyes was enough to make Dustil sorry he'd provoked her. Case had told him that Bastila had never forgiven herself for falling under Malak's torture. He reached out a hand to her arm. "Jedi Shan, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

She lifted her chin, all traces of emotion wiped away. "It is of no consequence, Padawan. The Jedi Code is imperfect because it is followed by imperfect sentients. But it is all we have." Something dark shone in her eyes, like regret. "But I did not come to you to discuss philosophy. Can you feel her proximity through your Bond?"

Dustil nodded. "We're close. I can't tell anything more than that, though, because I get caught up in what she's feeling and can't separate myself from it. It's like I'm actually feeling it, too."

"Yes, I remember," Bastila said quietly. Dustil recalled that she had been Bonded to Case, too, back when they were searching for the Star Forge. Until Malak. She gripped his shoulder. "We must find her, Padawan. Not just for your sake or your father's, but for her own." The urgency in her voice took him by surprise. What did she know that he didn't?

Dustil was suddenly conscious that the two of them were standing in their sleep clothes in his quarters in the middle of the night. He was surprised, though, to actually feel a little more normal after talking with the prim Jedi. "Well, I guess I'm not going to get any more sleep tonight. I think I'll see if I can relieve Father at the helm. He gets little enough sleep as it is."

She acknowledged his change of tone and ran a hand over her disheveled hair. "Yes, of course. I think I'll try to—"

The ship suddenly jerked to the right, tossing Dustil into the flat panel of the sidewall and Bastila into him. The hyperdrive engine bucked and screeched and then went silent. Dustil righted himself and dashed into the central room, Bastila right behind him. Pellek ran in from the cargo hold.

"What the hell's going on, Admiral?" the Exile snapped into the comm.

The ship bucked and Dustil gripped the central panel to keep himself upright. His father's voice came over the comm. "Something just dragged us out of hyperspace, and it's not friendly. I'm going to try to outrun them, but someone get on the rear turrets, just in case."

All three of them looked at each other. Dustil had never operated gun turrets before—their little ship, the _Outlander,_ just had small forward lasers for protection. Pellek shrugged. "I haven't touched a gun turret in ten years," she said. They both looked at Bastila. She raised her hands. "No, I'm afraid I don't—"

A explosion sounded near the control room, and emergency klaxons started blaring. "Someone get on the damn guns!" his father roared through the comm.

Pellek took off at a run and swung herself up the shaft for the turrets. A moment later, the sound of lasers told Dustil that she had at least figured out how to make them work. Dustil looked over at Bastila and saw her standing perfectly still with her eyes closed. Only a small line between her eyebrows told him how hard she was concentrating. _Battle Meditation_, he realized.

Dustil left her and jogged up to the cockpit. He wasn't the world's best pilot, but at least he wouldn't be standing around uselessly.

His father's hands were flying over the controls, eyes fixed on the viewscreen before him. Dustil could see three small fighters ahead of them and, from the tactical overlay, three more blips behind them. The space lanes were crossed with red laser fire.

"I don't know how they found us in hyperspace, but we can't make another jump until we're clear of that gas planet," his father told him, eyes never leaving the viewscreen.

Dustil swung into the copilot seat and pulled down the gunnery overlay. The _Ebon Hawk_ had small forward cannons, hardly more than blaster rifles, but they would keep the three fighters far enough away to avoid the tractor beams they were throwing.

Dustil got into the rhythm of firing, hearing no sound in the cockpit besides the click of the controls and the occasional curse from his father as they dodged torpedoes. Dustil could feel Bastila's Battle Mediation surrounding them, increasing their acuity and speed. If it was slowing down the fighters around them, though, he couldn't tell.

A small moon emerged from the back of the swirling yellow gas giant. Dustil pulled up the sensors. "Its atmosphere is breathable," he reported. "It looks familiar—Case and I may have stopped there for supplies a couple years ago. I think we can land safely."

His father shook his head. "If we land with them behind us, we're sitting gizka. We've got to try to clear the system."

They pitched forward as something crashed in the midsection of the ship. His father glanced down at the diagnostic. "Damn. Right rear hyperdrive is blown. We'll never make it to hyperspace alive." He paused, then blew his breath out sharply. "We're going to have to land on the moon. Can you get me a flight path?"

Dustil let the computer create the best landing approach and sent it over to his father's monitor. Carth considered it, still dodging enemy fire, and nodded. "I can work with this," he said finally.

A stream of unintelligible language came at them over the comm from one of the ships around them. Dustil couldn't understand it, but he could hear the intent through the Force, and it wasn't a welcome message.

Before he could warn him, Carth opened a comm channel. "Repeat in Basic, over."

A long moment, and then, heavily accented, "Unidentified freighter, you have been disabled. Surrender and prepare to be boarded."

His father grinned, and Dustil was suddenly reminded of Case. "Unidentified fighter, this is the _Ebon Hawk_. Go to hell." He closed the channel with a click. "Hang on," he said to Dustil.

Without any more warning, they pulled suddenly to the right and rotated on their axis. Two of the fighters miscalculated their vectors and crashed into one another, creating brief fireballs before the oxygen dissipated. The four remaining fighters pulled into formation behind them, concentrating their fire on their standard engines. Dustil knew they'd die a quick death if the engines were hit.

His father, though, seemed oblivious to the danger, hands flying across the panel like he was part of the ship. He tugged them out of their spin and made a quick dive toward the moon's surface. He flipped open the internal comm. "Exile, concentrate on that first ship—If we take it out, the others will lose their formation."

"Right," was the short response from the turrets. With all the ships behind them, the front cannons were of no use, so Dustil gripped the arms of his seat and watched the moon get large in the screen.

His father was executing evasive maneuvers like he dodged laser fire every day. The only sign of any tension was the sweat on his forehead—his hands were completely steady. Dustil could see why his father was considered one of the Fleet's best pilots. There was a sudden explosion behind them and Dustil saw in the rear monitor the lead ship breaking into pieces, taking two of the following ships with it into oblivion. The fourth ship pulled up and veered away from them.

Dustil resisted the urge to cheer. "Nice shooting!" Carth said. "Everyone brace for atmosphere!"

Dustil had landed plenty of ships in the last five years, but he'd never come down on a planet as fast as they were going. Warning lights and sirens lit up the panel. "Warning, velocity exceeds maximum recommended entry speed," the computer intoned. "Warning—"

Carth kicked under the panel and the voice stopped. Dustil secured his harness and held his breath.

They hit the atmosphere like it was a titansteel wall. Dustil bounced hard back against the restraints and heard the wind go out of him. They streaked toward the surface, the air turning pink around them, wide green plains stretching ahead. Dustil checked the landing vector he'd given his father. "Wait, this isn't the right spot!" he shouted.

His father shook his head, teeth clenched and sweat pouring down his neck. "Too many cities nearby," he grunted, all his weight against the landing stick. "Had to change the vector."

"In your _head_?" Dustil cried, forgetting the ground looming up at them for a moment. "No one can change vectors in their head!" There were too many variables—speed, wind, even ocean currents, to manage without the navicomputer. His father was going to kill them all. The ground got huge and Dustil clenched his eyes shut.

The rear banged first, then scraped for what seemed like forever before the front of the ship hit. Dustil was thrown forward in the restraints, and he thought he must have blacked out for a second. He blinked a few times and shook his head.

Green prairie stretched as far as he could see in the viewscreen. The blue sky glimmered above them. They were alive.

Carth was limp in the pilot seat, hand over his eyes and breathing heavily. He unbuckled his restraints, and Dustil saw his hand shaking for the first time. "You okay, son?" he asked.

Dustil grinned. "You're going to have to teach me to do that."

Carth wiped the sweat from his face. "Like hell."

They secured the nav controls and exited the cockpit. Bastila was leaning against the central console, and Dustil thought she looked a bit green. She smiled shakily at them. "I am reminded again of your skills. Thank you."

The Exile dropped down from the gun turrets. "Not bad, Admiral. My pilot's landings were twice as rocky."

The ghost she called Atton Rand glowered from the doorway. "Whatever, babe. This ain't exactly Malachor."

Carth came back from the engine room, grim. "The hyperspace engine is blown all to hell. We're going to have to get some replacement parts or we'll never get out of this system." He turned to Dustil. "Did you say you and Case had been here?"

Dustil nodded and pulled up a quick map from the computer. "There's a city about four kilometers from here. We were never there, but it looks decently sized on this map. They're sure to have a parts store or a scrap yard."

"Good. Two of us should stay with the ship in case someone saw us come down," Carth said. "Bastila, you and Dustil wait here, and the Exile and I will go into town."

Bastila nodded serenely, but Dustil protested, "What do you mean, stay here? I'm the only one who's been on this moon before, remember?" He wasn't five years old, and he wasn't going to hide on the ship while someone twice his age did all the work.

Carth was unmoved. "Someone who can fly the ship needs to stay here with it in case you need to get back into space. You can't leave the system without hyperdrive, but if those fighters come back, you can at least get clear." His tone left no room for argument, and Dustil felt his blood boil.

"I'm not one of your soldiers, Father," he growled.

Carth looked at him sharply. "You will stay here on the ship. Is that understood?"

Dustil opened his mouth to retort when he felt Bastila's gaze on him. He flushed, realizing that he looked like a disobedient teenager in front of everyone. He clenched his jaw and nodded, almost keeping down the growl in his throat. "Fine."

Was it his imagination, or did his father look relieved as he turned away? Carth checked his holsters and nodded to Pellek. "Ready to go?" The two headed toward the gangplank.

Atton strolled by. "Don't forget to make your bed while we're gone, kid," he drawled.

If Dustil knew how to punch a ghost, he surely would have decked Atton Rand.


	5. Chapter 4

**FOUR**

Pellek was glad to be out in the open air after spending over a week trapped on the _Ebon Hawk_. She never had the same affection for the ship that the Admiral seemed to have; it had always been a run-down piece of junk to her. And after she learned that it had been Revan's ship, she seemed to feel the woman's aura all over it, gray and slippery like mist. She had never been comfortable after that.

She looked around for Atton and found him trailing her, a good four hundred meters back. She was glad he was keeping his distance while she was alone with the Admiral—the man couldn't see Force ghosts and he trusted her little enough as it was. The Admiral was ahead of her by a few meters, but he slowed up and fell into step beside her.

"I don't think I've told you properly, but I appreciate you coming with us, Exile," he said. "Bastila seemed to think you would be important to the mission."

"I think you're the only living sentient still calling me 'Exile,' Admiral," she replied. He raised his eyebrows, and she realized that the words had come out like a threat. Of course they had, because why should she be able to carry on a normal conversations with living sents anymore? All she did was talk to the ghosts chasing her.

"What would you prefer I call you?" he asked. "General? Jedi? Sweetheart?"

She bit back a sharp retort. "How about just Pellek?"

He grinned. "All right, Just Pellek. But you'll have to cut out that 'Admiral' business. The last thing we need is for the people of this moon to think we're an invasion party from the Republic. You call me Carth, and I'll call you Pellek."

Calling him Carth seemed too familiar. _She_ called him Carth. But that was better than being reminded of her crimes every time he addressed her. Pellek had stopped being the Exile when she killed Kreia. She changed topics. "How long do you think we have until those fighters send someone to the ship?"

"A good day, I think. I changed our landing vector at the last minute, so they'll have to do a visual sweep of the planet to find the _Hawk_. If we don't find the parts we need here, though, we'll have to camp away from the ship, just in case. This moon is close enough to the border of the Outer Rim that they probably see Republics on a fairly regular basis. If Case and Dustil managed to buy supplies here, then we shouldn't attract too much attention doing the same."

They walked in companionable silence for another half klick, and Pellek could see the outskirts of the city ahead of them. It appeared to be open to the prairie; no wall or guard blocked their entry. She was glad for that, because even in an old flight jacket, Carth looked like an Admiral on parade inspection. They'd be spotted as Republics by any sentry a klick away.

"Did you know her, before?" Carth asked abruptly.

It was obvious the "her" to which he was referring, but before what? Before Revan became Darth Revan? Before Darth Revan became Case? Before all of them became lost at Malachor? Pellek sighed. "She and Malak were a couple of years ahead of me, but yes, I knew her. She was the best with a blade I've ever seen."

Carth chuckled. "Yeah, she surprised the hell out of me on Taris, and that was while she was still using vibroblades. The woman was positively vicious once she had a lightsaber in her hand. But most of the time, she managed to talk her way out of any scrapes we were in. She was—is—persuasive as hell, even without the Force."

Pellek knew that firsthand. Revan had come to her while Pellek was mediating a land dispute on Tatooine, after they both had completed their Knight trials. Pellek could still remember the way the Force seemed to swirl around the woman. She had looked like Destiny coming toward her.

Revan grinned ruefully at the endless Dune Sea. She had her hair back in a messy ponytail, and the wind whipped the short pieces around her head. "Doesn't Vrook ever give you interesting assignments, Pel?"

Pellek smiled and shook the sand out of her Jedi robes. "Anything is better than Dantooine. I've seen enough rolling plains to last me the rest of my life. What brings you out here, Revan? I thought you were spying on the Mandalorians with Malak."

Revan got serious, and Pellek realized that this wasn't just a casual visit. Revan wanted something. "There's something strange about the attack, Pel. I'm still not sure what it is, but this war isn't predicted by their history. I think there's something more going on."

"Like what?"

She frowned. "I'm not sure, but it's a bigger threat than Mandalore, I know that. But we're never going to find out if we're defeated—the Council is just sitting on its hands and watching our people get slaughtered out there!"

Pellek knew this was all leading up to something, but also she knew that Revan expected her to play her part, indulge her ego by asking the obvious questions. "What do you suggest we do? The Council has forbidden direct involvement."

Revan's mouth twisted. "The Council thinks it knows everything, but they've isolated themselves from the Galaxy so long that they're terrified of it." She leaned in conspiratorially, even though no one at the Anchorhead cantina was close enough to overhear them. "We've sworn to protect the Galaxy. And I mean to do that whether the Council helps us or not. I'm gathering Jedi, young ones like us who can still think for ourselves. I'm going to offer our services to the Fleet."

Pellek laughed out loud. "I'm afraid I don't know anything about the military, Revan. Corellia is a pacifist state."

"You connect with people through the Force like no other Jedi I've seen. Imagine how effectively you'll be able to lead an army." She put her hand over Pellek's. "I need you, Pel."

Pellek looked down at the hand covering hers, then up to Revan's gaze. Her dark eyes were fierce, like the core of a sandstorm. And just like that, her decision was made. "I'll join you," Pellek said.

Pellek shook herself out of the past and glanced at Carth next to her. He seemed lost in a memory of his own. "Revan didn't need the Force to be persuasive," she said. "She had the power of right behind her. We all believed we were doing the right thing when we joined the war."

"It must have been hard to see the change in her, after she—after she fell," Carth said. "She must have been a different person to you."

She should pity the poor man, give him the answer he was practically begging her for. But she shook her head, "That was the thing about it, Carth. She was exactly the same."

She saw Carth's angry eyes and clenched fist before he lengthened his stride and walked ahead of her again. Carth might deserve her pity, but Revan didn't. She had already done Revan enough favors.

* * *

Dustil could see the broken manifold of the hyperdrive engine buried deep inside the compact unit. He was on his back under the engine with a lamp between his teeth, trying to get his hand in far enough to pull the manifold out. If he could get it out, he might be able to repair the damage with the Force. 

It was just out of reach. He grabbed a hypospanner from the floor and angled it toward the piece. Almost there—just a millimeter more—

The manifold sparked and sent electricity jolting into his arm. He shouted and slid himself backward, out into the hallway. He stood up and kicked the engine. "Lousy piece of junk," he muttered.

He heard muffled laughter behind him. Dustil turned to see Bastila leaning against the doorway and watching him with amusement. "Who are you laughing at?" he growled.

She straightened and affected a very serious pose. "I don't see anyone laughing, Jedi," she said. "I just see a grown man kicking an engine that appears to have insulted him."

Dustil glowered, half seriously, and tried to shake some feeling back into his fingers. "I don't know why everyone's so enamored with this falling down wreck of a ship."

Bastila held her palm out to him. "Here, let me Heal it for you."

"No, don't bother. It serves me right for poking the engine with a tool when I don't know what's behind the broken part." He strode past her and stretched his hands to the ceiling. "I'm going outside. We might have to stay with the ship, but I'll be damned if I'll give up a perfectly good day on the surface of a friendly moon when I have the chance."

Bastila trailed behind him. "That is a sensible idea. The fresh air will improve my mediation."

Dustil dropped the gangplank and strode out to the prairie. The land was as flat as could be for klicks in all directions. The gas planet the moon circled loomed high and green in the western sky. The calf-high grass was a cheerful teal green interspersed with yellow flowers that reminded him of spring calli blooms from Telos. Bastila promptly found a shady spot near the ship's wing and sat cross-legged in the grass. The tall blades reached almost up to her—

Dustil averted his eyes. Surely it was just coincidence that she was wearing a form-fitting jumpsuit instead of Jedi robes. Taunting him for his earlier comment about her clothes would demonstrate a sense of humor he was sure Bastila didn't have.

Dustil ignited his blade and forced himself to concentrate instead on the weight of the lightsaber in his hand and the friction of the air as he began some simple form exercises. In just a few minutes, he was totally engrossed in the movement of his blade and body working as though made for each other. He closed his eyes and imagined a progression of enemies attacking him, most constructed from Case's stories about the search for the Star Forge. First three angry Wookiees, then half a dozen Sand People, then a cave full of kinrath spiders. All were easily dispatched. He stretched his mind, looking for a better challenge—

—and found himself face to face with Case. She looked just the same as she had on the Sith planet, armor scuffed and mended in ten places, hair roughly cut and shoved back with a targeting visor. She even had that feral grin that told him he was about to get his ass kicked in practice. It looked like Case, but there was something wrong with her eyes. They were full of fear.

"I told you not to follow me!" she whispered harshly.

Dustil lowered his blade. "Where are you? I left to get help. Pellek Tran and Bas—"

Case's eyes widened. "Pellek Tran? She's still alive? Where is she?"

"She's with me, on a moon a few days into the Unknown Regions. We're coming back to the Sith planet—are you still there? Are you okay?" She didn't look hurt, but there was something off about her, something she was hiding.

A slow smile spread across Case's lips, like she had received an unexpected gift. "Good. The two of you together—" she shook her head suddenly, and the fear was back in her eyes. "Get out of my head! Get out of here!" She charged toward him, yellow lightsaber extended.

Dustil barely got his blade up in time to block her wild slash. "Case, what are you doing?" She kept coming at him. Dustil growled low in his throat and switched forms. She wasn't going to get rid of him so easily—he had to find out where she was. He ducked her swing, then snapped his heel out into her stomach. She bent over, gasping, and Dustil flipped her blade out of her hand. She backed away, palm extended and glowing with the Force.

"Tell me where you are, Case," he asked again, voice full of Persuasion. A worried whisper in his head reminded him that he had never disarmed her so easily, not once in five years.

She looked anxiously over her shoulder. "Espol," she whispered, then flung her hand forward and Pushed him back—

Dustil opened his eyes to find the empty prairie of the moon before him. Bastila was still quietly meditating next to the ship. The angle of the sunlight and a glance at his chrono told him he'd been "practicing" for almost two hours. Dustil sheathed his blade and hung it back on his belt, trying to decide whether he'd actually been talking to Case or if he'd just let his imagination get away from him. He'd never heard of a planet named Espol. But he'd never seen Case look terrified that way, either, not even when they were in the most hopeless of fights. Something was wrong.

"Case has contacted you," Bastila remarked calmly, eyes still closed.

"How did you know that?" he demanded. He didn't have a damn Force Bond with Bastila, and he was tired of her knowing what was in his head.

She opened her eyes slowly. "You're broadcasting in the Force like a lighthouse. Visions such as you have had are not easily accomplished. Only the strongest in the Force can manage them, and any Force Sensitive in this system probably felt you just now."

Dustil hadn't considered that. It occurred to him suddenly how the fighters might have found them in hyperspace. He'd have to be more careful. "She said she was on Espol," he said finally.

Bastila paled. "Espol?" she asked. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Espol. I've never heard of it." Dustil didn't like the look on Bastila's face, like she was trying to decide what to tell him. "What, dammit?" he demanded.

Bastila opened her mouth, then squinted into the slanting sun behind him. "Someone approaches," she said.

Dustil turned and saw a low vehicle, like a large, flat speeder, crossing the plains at a fast speed. He shaded his eyes and could make out five silhouettes standing up. He gingerly felt toward them with his Force senses but could only make out a vague blur. "They're either shielded or naturally resistant to the Force," he said.

Bastila glanced back toward the ship. "I suppose it is too late to hide on the _Hawk_. Your father will be displeased that we have attracted attention, I think."

The speeder came to a stop about ten meters from them. Dustil decided he might as well try diplomacy and strode to meet them, hands out and empty in greeting. "Are we ever glad to see you!" he called cheerfully. "Our ship crashed, and we're looking for a replacement hyperdrive manifold. You don't happen to have one, do you?"

The aliens, which looked a bit like Rodians except for short blue fur falling from their foreheads to their flat noses, conferred quietly among themselves. After a moment, all four of them turned to them and raised blaster rifles. "Which one of you is the Force user?" the center one said in garbled Basic. It was the same accent as the voice from the fighter had.

_Broadcasting in the Force_, Dustil thought to himself. This was his fault. He opened his mouth to speak but Bastila beat him to it.

"I am," she said, drawing herself up to her haughtiest height. "My servant and I are here on a trading mission."

"Your servant?" Dustil hissed under his breath. He didn't know what she hoped to accomplish by this, but he was tired of everyone trying to protect him. He said loudly, "I'm not—"

Before he could get the sentence out, the alien still on the ship flung something over his head. Dustil instinctively ducked and heard Bastila gasp behind him. He turned to see her stiff and tangled in something that glowed faintly green. A Stasis net. He had only seen one other one, about three years ago on a very unfriendly planet they'd been lucky to escape. "Hey!" he shouted. "What the hell are you doing?"

The four blaster rifles were now pointed at him. "You're safe now, sentient," the leader said. "Your master can't control you while we have her in the net."

"Look, you have it all wrong," he protested.

The aliens' fur darkened ominously to gray. "Then are you also a Force user?"

Dustil glanced quickly from the blaster rifles to Bastila. He could certainly escape from these aliens, but to do so would leave Bastila helpless in the net. He had to play along. He forced a grateful look to his face. "No, no! I'm not. Thank you for rescuing me from her, kind sentients."

The aliens' fur relaxed back to blue. They leaned together to confer again, then straightened. "We would like to speak with you further, sentient. And we must question the Force user. Will you come with us?" They hadn't lowered their rifles a centimeter.

"Of course, whatever I can do," he said. The aliens nodded approvingly. Dustil glanced at the _Ebon Hawk_, then sighed and carefully picked Bastila up, net and all, and carried her onto the speeder platform. They started toward the city on the horizon.

Bastila was right. His father was going to be most displeased at this turn of events.


	6. Chapter 5

**FIVE**

Carth dug through the piles of hyperspace engine manifolds, looking for one he could fit into the _Hawk's_ engine. It was a good-sized scrap yard, and well organized, but it didn't seem to have many Republic-compatible engine parts. They'd been out in the piles for two hours now, and Carth was beginning to think they might have to give up and buy something new.

Pellek was sitting on a pile of engine casings, looking bored and hot. She occasionally pushed her hair off her forehead and muttered something to the air next to her. Just when Carth was about to shut down the search, she pointed to the back of the pile and called, "Isn't that what you're looking for?"

Carth looked where she indicated and saw the manifold, like it had just been waiting for him to find it. He tugged it out of the stack and was rewarded by the hissing of a displaced rodent. Carth examined the manifold carefully and found it to be in relatively good shape. It would work. He put it in his pack and walked over to collect Pellek. "I thought you said you didn't know anything about engines."

She smiled like he'd said something funny. "I don't, believe me," she said enigmatically.

Carth clenched his jaw and slowly counted to ten. He'd had just about enough of vague Jedi glances, cryptic sayings, and knowing nods. He was too old for all of them to be treating him like a slightly dim child, someone to be protected from the frightening realities of the world. "Then tell me, Master Jedi," he said a tight voice, "how you knew that the _Ebon Hawk_ required a Mark 1720 Titancore Hyperdrive Manifold." If she'd been digging around in his head, he wasn't sure he could be responsible for his actions.

She must have seen something in his expression, because she flushed. "You're right. I'll explain on the way back." They started back toward town. "You remember that I had a crew with me when we came back to Citadel Station? Well, some of them were Force Sensitive—actually, all of them were, except for Mandalore."

Carth smiled briefly at the thought of Canderous wielding anything as delicate as a lightsaber. "Three of your crew were lost on Malachor," he prompted.

She looked sharply at him. "Keeping track of me, Admiral?" She acknowledged his shrugged assent with a nod. "Of course you were. Yes, the three who followed me to the Core died. I couldn't save them." Her voice was stripped of emotion, a tone Carth knew well.

"Sometimes you can't," he said quietly.

They entered the center of town. Two and three story buildings lined the streets, shops and offices interspersed with homes and apartments. A mix of residents and off-worlders passed them without comment, though Carth still felt conspicuous as the only Humans. Pellek didn't seem to notice.

"I should have been able to save them," she continued. "But I had taught two of them—Atton Rand and Bao-Dur—to touch the Force. They appear to me sometimes as ghosts, Atton more than Bao-Dur." Pellek smiled thinly. "Sometimes they're even helpful."

Carth tried not to show his distaste. It figured that Jedi didn't even have the decency to die like normal sentients. "What about your third companion? The bounty hunter—is she a ghost, too?"

Pellek's jaw tightened. "Mira was Sensitive, probably more than Bao-Dur. But she wouldn't let me train her. She said it would unbalance our relationship for her to be my student. She said she would talk to Master Vrook about learning the Force after we finished our quest." Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. "She said she would stay on the ship."

Carth was a little surprised about the pairing. Mira had seemed almost a caricature of a bounty hunter's dream girl, with her revealing clothing and flirtatious manner. But he'd been wrong about women before, and the Exile was an attractive woman herself.

Pellek smiled at his expression. "Atton was terribly disappointed when she told him that she didn't like men." Her smile faded. "She died. Kreia killed her because she knew that I loved her. She killed them all. And because Mira wasn't trained as a Jedi, she'll never come back to me through the Force. She's just—gone."

Carth wanted to be angry with her. After all, regular sentients didn't get to see their loved ones again after they died, and there was a time he would have given anything—_anything_—to have that privilege. He couldn't quite muster sympathy for a Jedi having to muddle through life like the rest of the Galaxy. But then he looked at Pellek's expressionless face and understood why she'd spent the last year trolling the Rim for booze and warm beds. He recognized the hollowness in her eyes.

Carth squeezed her shoulder once. "I'm sorry."

She nodded, and they continued out of town.

* * *

Pellek was a little mortified that she'd opened up so completely to the Admiral. She certainly hadn't intended to spew out her sorrow like that, and for one terrible moment, she actually thought that she might cry. Fortunately, Carth hadn't offered any overt sympathy, just a quiet understanding. She didn't know much about him, but she knew he was from Telos. He understood loss. 

They were approaching the end of the town's business district, and so far, no one had bothered them or even said hello. The aliens they passed looked at the ground when they walked by. Pellek wondered if it was just them, or if it was the local culture to avoid eye contact. To avoid appearing rude, she stopped watching the sentients and looked at the colorful posters on the sides of the buildings.

The posters looked like public warnings of some kind, like the sort she remembered from Corellia about not littering on the street or driving a speeder too slowly. She couldn't read the writing on the posters but they seemed to show aliens in different states of action. In one, a cloaked figure was pointing a stick at a group of other aliens with white fur. The next poster showed the same figure in a sitting position a few centimeters above the ground. Several round objects floated in the air around it. Pellek frowned at the last poster. It depicted the figure again, and for it looked for all the world like it was throwing Force Lightning at a group of blue furred aliens. She couldn't see the figure's face, but it was taller than the diminutive aliens and Human-shaped.

She glanced around her and this time noticed several aliens watching her examine the posters. She couldn't read their expressions, but she had to stop her hands from reaching for her saber hilt. Atton appeared at her elbow. "I don't like the way those look, Pel," he said in a low voice.

She glanced at him. He was still looking at the posters, his eyebrows furrowed. "You don't think those are Jedi, do you?" she asked. "They ought to be Sith—I mean, Force Lightning?"

He shrugged. "The Onasi kid throws Force Lightning, doesn't he?"

Pellek frowned. That didn't prove anything as far as she was concerned. She'd seen Dustil's yellow eyes and threatening blade. "Maybe you'd better get out of here. If any of these sents are Force Sensitive, they'll sniff you out in a second."

He nodded in agreement. "Be careful, babe. I can't get you out of jail anymore." He looked suddenly remorseful but blinked out before she could say anything.

Pellek quickened her pace to catch up to Carth, now half a block ahead.

"We need to get out of here quickly," she said in a low voice.

He looked sharply at her, hand on his blaster, then scanned the crowd. "What's going on?"

"I don't know," she replied, "but these sentients don't like Jedi." She pointed out the posters.

Carth nodded slowly. "I think you might be—"

A alarm, high-pitched and urgent, filled the streets. The aliens around them froze in place, staring upward at what looked like loudspeakers on the lightposts. A voice came from the loudspeakers, but it wasn't in Basic, and Pellek had no idea what it was saying. She could tell from the way the aliens' fur turned pale that something significant was being said. The aliens started to run into the buildings around them.

A alien stuck its head out of the building nearest them and waved them toward it urgently. It said something commanding. Carth had started to walk away when the alien said in broken Basic, "You. In. Bad out. Now."

Carth and Pellek looked at each other on the suddenly empty street. He glanced at the sky and shrugged. "It's not a tornado," he remarked, "but it could be almost anything else."

Pellek thought the short alien was going to have a fit. Its head fur was completely white, and its eyes bugged out of its head. It looked both ways, then ran out to them and grabbed Pellek's arm. "In, in, in," it said, then burst into unintelligible chatter. It tried to tug her toward the building.

Pellek glanced to Carth and nodded. Whatever was out here, it terrified the little alien, and she didn't sense any danger from him. She didn't much care to be standing out here during a freak radiation blast or something equally deadly. They followed him into the building.

Inside, the alien bolted the door securely and closed heavy shutters over the windows. It smiled at them. "Good," it said.

The room was small, like an office waiting area. There were several low benches, too close to the ground for Human comfort, and on them were seated four of the aliens, huddled together like refugees. Several stacks of datapads littered the low tables in the room, furthering the waiting-room feel. If it weren't for the palpable fear coming from all of these sentients, she would think she was waiting for a bureaucrat or the dentist.

The alien that had called them into the building disappeared into a back door and came out holding a basket of what appeared to be rolls. It held the basket out to her and Carth first, smiling. She and Carth each took one. Pellek took a bite and smiled approvingly at the alien. It was sweet and studded with some kind of chewy dried fruit. She was hungry, and it was good. "Thank you," she said. The alien nodded and served the others.

Carth was chewing on his roll absentmindedly and eyeing the barred and locked door. His hand kept dropping to his blaster and then pulling away. Pellek knew she didn't have Carth's military instincts, but she had plenty of merc ones, and she couldn't bring herself to be worried about these aliens. Their auras were soft and pale, like a child's plush toy. In contrast, Carth's aura was dark blue and jagged, like a mountain ridge. To her Force senses, he was vastly more dangerous than the sentients around them.

Pellek felt a soft touch to her arm. She looked to her left and saw an alien's wide eyes looking up at her. This one was smaller than the others, reaching barely to her elbow. "I'm Pellek," she said with a smile. "Can you tell me what's going on?"

The alien didn't smile back. It had a roll clutched tightly in its fist. "Are you a Force user, too?" it asked in surprisingly clear Basic.

Too? Pellek felt surreptitiously toward the small alien and saw the tiny spark of Sensitivity in it. Untrained, certainly, but there. It was young. She could feel the others' eyes on her and remembered the threatening posters. "Not me," she lied easily. "And not my friend, either. Why? What's wrong with the Force?"

One of the aliens let out a burst of reproachful chatter and the small alien ducked its head. "I'm Follani," it whispered, then ran back to the arms of the taller alien. Its mother, Pellek decided, seeing the alien's fierce, protective expression. It thought it had to protect its child from her.

Carth spoke up in a calm voice. "We're just a couple of travelers from the Republic down on our luck. We're not here to hurt anyone. Can anyone tell us what's happening outside?" The aliens looked at him blankly. He tried again, first in broken Huttese and then in even worse Mando'a. He looked at her and shrugged. "That's everything I know. If Case were here—" he broke off. "Do you know anything besides Basic?" he asked.

Before she could answer, Pellek felt a sudden burst of—power, was the only way to describe it. It was like a spotlight shining through the Force. She reached for it instinctively and recognized Dustil in the Force, as well as the familiar gray aura of—

"Revan," she breathed.

Carth looked at her sharply. "What did you say?" he demanded. His hand was back on his blaster.

She was spared a response by the alarms starting up again. The aliens burst into terrified chatter. The one who had let them in flipped down a computer panel and consulted a screen written in the same language as the posters outside. He announced something to the room and the chattering quieted.

Pellek felt a change in the room's atmosphere. The aliens were still afraid, but they were now—expectant, perhaps, like a collectively held breath. They were waiting for something to happen.

Follani was next to her again. "You're not as scary as they say," it whispered.

She looked at it, surprised. "As who--" she began.

The door to the room burst open and three aliens with blaster rifles charged in. Pellek called her saber to her hand without thinking and ignited it. The invading aliens' fur went pale and Pellek groaned. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_, she thought. She knew they were afraid of Jedi, and now here she was, the very picture of one.

Before she could extinguish her blade, though, it suddenly became heavy in her hands. The room spun nauseatingly and she found herself staring at an alien's boot, her head on the carpeted floor. She tried to raise herself up with her arms but found that she couldn't make them work. Across the room, she saw Carth drop to his knees and then to the ground, blaster falling uselessly from his hand. _The rolls_, she realized, feeling the now-obvious sedative pounding on her brain. This was what the aliens had been waiting for. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

The room went black.


	7. Chapter 6

**SIX**

"I thought you wanted to talk!" Dustil said to the alien marching him from the holding cell to—wherever they were going. As it had the last three times he had spoken to it, the alien guard grumbled something in its language and kept walking.

Dustil sighed and tried to ignore the panic that kept creeping up in his chest. The panic told him that he had to get out of here, that he was wasting his time, that Case might die before he reached her—but he could do nothing without his weapon or the Force, and he couldn't risk using the Force and betraying himself before he found Bastila. He and Bastila had been separated as soon as they reached the town, and Dustil had spent the last several hours in a small holding cell. Then, without warning or apparent instruction, the guard had dropped the forcefield and gestured for Dustil to walk.

Dustil checked surreptitiously through the Force again and was reassured that Bastila was pissed as hell and worried, but otherwise unharmed. If he could just find someone in charge, he was sure he could convince them that he and Bastila were harmless. It had worked two years ago on Tarkis II when he had gotten Case out of a very suspicious university's detention center. He just needed clear space, a little Force Persuasion, and enough time to get back to his ship.

The guard's comm beeped and the alien rattled something back to it. He stopped abruptly at a doorway, yanking Dustil to a halt. He opened the door and gestured. "What's inside?" Dustil asked. In response, the alien shoved him through the door and closed it behind him.

Dustil quickly regained his balance and examined the room. It was an office, dominated by a large desk in the center with two chairs. There was a seating area to the side with a holoplayer. Wide windows revealed that it was midmorning on the moon. A door hissed open to his right and his father stumbled into the room, barely catching himself on his hands and knees.

"Father?" Dustil asked incredulously. He stood rooted to his spot, too surprised to move.

His father groaned and put a hand to his head. "Frack," Carth muttered.

"He'll be all right, kid," a voice said beside him. Dustil looked over to see Atton Rand glowing faintly beside him. The ghost looked tired, if such a thing were even possible.

"What happened?" Dustil demanded.

Atton shrugged. "Near as I can tell, Pel and the Admiral fell for the old poisoned-hospitality trick. Dropped them both like stunned tulla birds."

"What's going on here? What do these people want?" Dustil asked.

"What, you think I'm all-knowing just because I'm dead? I don't know any more than you do, kid, which is that these aliens clearly have something against Force users, and some way to find them. They'd sniffed Pel out before she'd even done anything with the Force." Atton narrowed his eyes. "Come to think of it, _Padawan_, why haven't found you?"

Dustil didn't like Atton's accusatory stare. "It's none of your business, but I can shield my Force abilities. It's come in handy these last few years."

Atton snapped his fingers. "_That's_ where I've seen you before. You were on that blocade run to Telos a few years ago, weren't you? The kid with the Sith Assassin holodisc?"

Dustil was vividly reminded of the pilot's calculating gaze and red-tinged aura. "Yeah," he agreed slowly, "but you weren't with the Exile then."

Atton's expression was unreadable. "No, that was before—a lot of things."

Carth finally noticed Dustil's presence. "Dustil?" he asked in confusion. "What are you doing here?" He got himself to his feet and leaned unsteadily against the desk. "I thought I told you to stay with the ship."

Dustil clenched his jaw on the smartass response he wanted to make. "These sentients are apparently afraid of the Force. They captured us out by the ship a while ago and they've been questioning Bastila somewhere else nearby. I assume that's where Pellek is, too."

"Why aren't you with them?" Carth asked. "You're a—" he glanced around and lowered his voice, "Jedi, too."

"I don't think they care about Jedi or Sith," Atton remarked. "I think they're afraid of the Force, period."

Dustil nodded. "That makes sense. There plenty of Sith out here in the Unknown Regions, but there's also ex-Jedi and untrained Force users. Most sentients don't care much about the philosophical differences."

His father frowned. "What?"

Dustil realized that his response to Atton must have sounded completely nonsequitur to Carth's question. He didn't quite know how to begin explaining about Force ghosts, though. "Well, you see, Pellek had a pilot, Atton Rand—"

"Oh, the ghost," Carth interrupted. "Of course you're talking to the damn ghost, too." He rubbed his forehead. "Tell him hello for me," he muttered irritably.

Atton grinned. "Howdy, Admiral." He glanced at the door. "Hey, I think you've got company. I'm going to check on Pel and the Princess. I'll let you know if I find anything." He disappeared.

As predicted, the door hissed open and two aliens entered. Their head fur was light gray and they carried themselves with an official air. The one on the right looked nearly identical to the other, except for a long scar that crossed its face from eye to chin.

"Greetings, sentients," the scarred one said in accented Basic. "I am Startol, the darjuk of this community. My mate, Tepai, and I welcome you to Vintar." The alien, who Dustil thought of as male even though it looked exactly like its mate, smiled at them. Dustil carefully extended his Force senses and could feel sentients outside the room in all directions. These officials wanted to appear unarmed, but there was no doubt that Dustil and his father would be killed immediately if they attempted anything.

His father's diplomacy skills must have kicked in, because his former disorientation evaporated. "Carth Onasi, from Telos. This is my son, Dustil." Carth held out his hand to Startol. The alien looked perplexed for a moment, but then his expression cleared and he shook Carth's hand vigorously.

"This is your custom, yes," Startol said cheerfully. "We do not see your kind here very often. Our apologies for the. . .circumstances under which you were brought here. Such unpleasantries are sometimes required, but never celebrated. You can be assured that you will be treated with dignity from this point forward."

"What about Bastila and Pellek?" Dustil asked. The aliens looked at him blankly. "The women?" The aliens looked sideways at Carth, as though questioning Dustil's sentience. "You know, the Force users?" he said finally.

That got a reaction. The aliens' head fur went white. Startol spoke quickly to Tepai in their language and then raised his hands. "They are unharmed, we assure you. Are they—are they your mates?" he asked.

"Of course n—" Dustil began.

"—Of course they are," his father said quickly over him. "And we would like to see them immediately."

Tepai spoke up. "How could you be mated to such abominations?" She cocked her head at them. "Perhaps you do not realize that they are controlling your actions with their Force powers."

Dustil didn't like the suspicion that flickered in his father's eyes before he blinked it away. "Bastila and Pellek are what we call Jedi," Carth explained. "They have sworn to use the Force only to defend themselves, and the Republic."

"Don't you have any Force Sensitive people on your world?" Dustil asked.

Startol glowered. "Come, we will show you." He walked to the seating area and indicated for them to sit. Dustil awkwardly sat on the too-low couch, his knees high in the air. Startol sat opposite them with Tepai and pulled up the holoprojector. "For all of our history, since before we learned to bend space, some children were born who were touched by the gods. Their powers were not great, but they were trained by our priests to use them in service of the people, making construction easier and healing the sick. They were honored by society. It was this way for thousands of years." The holoprojector showed old recordings of smiling children and serious-eyed adults who were clearly using the Force. "Then, one day, everything changed." Startol clenched his fists and his head fur darkened. "The _Jedi_," he spit the word, "came to us."

Tepai placed a hand on her mate's shoulder and took up the story. "Thirty years ago, your Jedi came, and they were wise and kind. They said that they would train our special children to use their powers, and they could do even greater good than they did on our world." The holoprojector showed what were clearly Jedi, brown robes and all, talking to crowds of the aliens. Dustil leaned forward and squinted at the projection. He could have sworn one of the young Jedi was Jolee Bindo. These Jedi hadn't meant any harm, then. He sat back and nodded to Tepai to continue. "All the darjuki and their mates met and decided that this was a good thing, and we would send our children with the Jedi." She dropped her eyes. "Perhaps we were just naïve, to think that they would return while they were still children. They did not come back in five years, or ten."

Dustil had an uncomfortable feeling where this was headed. Tepai continued, "Some of them did return, twenty years later, when even their parents had forgotten the color of their fur. They returned with a great leader, a Jedi who wore a mask, and—" she paused and brought a hand to her mouth. The holoprojector showed burning buildings. "These Jedi, including our own children, killed the darjuki council, leaving their mates to die alone. Our children put themselves in the place of the council and forced our people to build weapons for the Jedi."

"And they wanted to!" Startol burst in. "These—these _Jedi_ made the people forget that their own families had been killed. We were no better than slaves—we, who had always been free."

"How did you defeat them?" his father asked. Dustil couldn't make anything out of his closed expression. He thought that was a bad sign, because Dustil knew they both realized that the masked Jedi had been Revan.

Tepai smiled and touched her mate affectionately on the arm. "Startol organized the other under-darjuki and they fought the Jedi. It cost many lives, but they defeated the Jedi and returned our freedom. We have been free for five years now."

"Those weren't Jedi, Startol," Dustil said. He wasn't sure whether he was trying to convince these aliens or his father. "I know they said they were, but they were Sith, a group of Force-users who don't use the Force for good. They were as much slaves to the Force as your people were slaves to them. The Jedi wouldn't do that."

He thought Tepai might be coming around, but Startol just shook his head. "There is no difference to me—I did not ask my daughter if she was Jedi or Sith when she attacked me with her light sword. She did not tell me if she was Jedi or Sith when I plunged my blade into her heart." Startol snapped off the holoprojector. "After the Children's Massacre, we built detectors in our cities to warn us if anyone uses the Force. Our children are no longer trained to use the Force, and to use it is a high crime."

Carth leaned forward. "Look, this has been a misunderstanding. I can repair our ship in a few hours and then we'll all be happy to leave your moon. I'll give you my personal assurance that Bastila and Pellek won't use the Force while we're here."

Only someone who was Force-blind would make such a ridiculous offer. Dustil could no more "not use" the Force as he could stop breathing. But he was sure Bastila and Pellek could at least be quiet about it until they got off this moon. Dustil couldn't help but be disgusted at a people so so terrified of themselves that they willingly blinded their children.

"What of your fourth companion?" Startol asked, jerking Dustil out of his thoughts.

"What companion?" Carth asked. "There are only the four of us."

Startol looked surprised. "We assumed you knew, as she is also Human." Startol pulled up the holoprojector again. "This was taken three weeks ago."

Carth made a strangled noise. The picture was grainy and dark, but it was clear enough. The blurry woman walking away from the recorder was none other than Case Lanatal.

* * *

Trayus Core was cold. Pellek knew she should be figuring out how she was going to defeat Kreia, or worrying about the increasing frequency of seismic rumbles under her feet, but all she could think about was how blasted cold it was. She paused before opening the door to the center of the Core and spared a last look to Sion, sprawled dead on the floor of the great hall. The Sith Lord had wanted to die, at the end.

Pellek shivered and then forced herself upright. She would not face Kreia with her shoulders bowed. She palmed open the door.

The walkway to the Core seemed to go on forever, but Pellek could see a figure at the end of it. Kreia would know she was coming, but Pellek thought the old woman would not attack her from a distance, despite the tactical advantage she had in the Force. Kreia still had something to tell her, she was sure.

A groan pulled her attention away from the Core. She saw the broken body a few meters ahead on the walkway. "Atton!" she gasped.

He was unbelievably, horribly, still alive. She could barely make out his eyes, swollen and bloodshot in his bruised and bloody face. His lips barely moved in a smile. "You're alive," he said. "Did I. . .save you yet?" He laughed weakly. "I let you down," he whispered.

"Shh, Atton, lie still." She felt their connection in the Force, and knew he was dying. No amount of kolto would save him now. _Myfaultmyfaultmyfault_, she screamed silently.

Atton grabbed her hand with his remaining one and pulled her to him with surprising strength. His voice was clear. "Loved you from the moment I first saw you, Pel. You saved me."

"There is no death, Atton, there is the Force," she whispered. The Force connection between them went slack and his hand dropped away. Pellek touched his forehead with hers, then stood and resumed her walk to the Core. Kreia would pay for this.

She thought she was prepared for anything. She should have known that Kreia would have something ready for her.

The old woman was standing calmly in the center of the Core, but Pellek didn't see her at first, nor did she see Bao-Dur's body, slung to the side like a child's toy. She didn't see either of them because she was transfixed by the wide eyes of Mira, staring terrified at her. The bounty hunter was a meter off the ground, hands tugging futilely at the invisible hold on her throat.

"The huntress was stronger than I thought, Exile," Kreia said. Pellek couldn't tear her eyes away from Mira's. "She tracked me very far. For you. And now she dies. For you." Kreia closed her fist.

The sound of Mira's neck breaking echoed in Pellek's head. _My fault_, she whispered to herself. _My fault_. Then she leapt at Kreia with her blade.

"General," a familiar voice called to her. "General, this is the wrong place."

Pellek forced her eyes open and saw Bao-Dur looking down at her. Her head was pounding like she'd been on a three day bender. "Bao?" she whispered.

The Zabrak smiled. "You have to live in the present, General. It's dangerous enough as it is. Be careful." He raised his hand to her hair and faded away.

Pellek forced herself to sit up in spite of the disturbing way the world spun. She'd been dreaming about Malachor, again. It seemed she would never escape that planet.

"What happened, Jedi Tran?" Bastila's voice interrupted her thoughts. "Where is the Admiral?"

Pellek squinted across the room and saw Bastila sitting on a low bench. They were in some kind of holding cell. Pellek hoped Bastila had gotten the drugged-roll treatment, too, at least for the headache. "You just left me unconscious here on the floor?" she asked. "Nice Jedi manners, Bastila."

Bastila actually looked chagrined for a moment before her features went frosty again. "I have no interest in babysitting a drunk."

Pellek laughed aloud at that and then wished she hadn't when the pain exploded across her skull. Maybe Bastila had a little spine to her, after all. "I wasn't drunk, at least not this time," she said. Pellek tugged on the Force and sent a little cooling Heal to her head. "Where are we?"

Bastila ran her hands over her hair and then clasped them tightly together. "We're somewhere in the town that you and Carth were headed toward. The inhabitants of this moon, the Vintari, found Dustil and me outside of the _Ebon Hawk_ and brought us both here. I haven't seen him since I arrived. They questioned me at some length about our purpose here."

"Have they hurt you?" Pellek asked, seeing the way the younger woman's hands trembled. She instinctively reached for her lightsaber hilt and was surprised to find that it was still there.

"No, no, they were courteous once we arrived," Bastila replied. "But there is something in their auras which concerns me greatly. These sentients are full of fear." The Jedi ran her hands over her hair again.

Pellek narrowed her eyes. Bastila was lying, she was sure of it. But it was plain that she wasn't hurt, so—what was it? Pellek extended her Force senses, but there was no chance she was getting through the titansteel block Bastila had wrapped around her thoughts. Pellek filed her suspicions away for another time and stood. "Well, then I guess we need to get out of here," she said.

The cell was a featureless box with a solid door—no weaknesses to break through. Pellek stood in front of the door and considered her options. "Atton?" she called. She felt through the Force but didn't sense him nearby. "Atton—could you try being useful for once and tell us what's on the other side of this door?"

No response from the ghost. Pellek heard low laughter behind her. She turned and saw Bastila biting her lower lip. "What?" she asked.

"There is an easier way, I think." Bastila strode past her and opened the door to the cell. An empty hallway beckoned.

Pellek blinked at the open door. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?" she asked finally.

Bastila shrugged and seemed to be controlling a smirk. "You never asked."

"Hey, good one, Princess," Atton said, materializing in the middle of the room. "Too bad I didn't die with a holocorder on me—Pel's face is priceless."

Pellek shoved through him and out the cell door. Just what she needed on top of her headache—a snotty Jedi and a damn Force ghost ganging up on her. And why had the Vintari left them in an unlocked room with their weapons, anyway? There was something very suspicous about all of this.

They were at one end of a short hallway that ended in a heavy wooden door. The hallway was flanked by two doors on each side. Pellek started toward the door ahead. "Which way to the Admiral, Atton?" she called behind her. "I've had about enough of this planet."

A sudden jerk in the Force drowned out Atton's answer. Pellek stopped dead in the hallway and raised her palm to the door on her left. She could feel the pulse of someone inside. Without thinking, she opened the door and strode through.

A small Vintari was sitting on the bench with its knees up and chin resting on top. It broke into a wide smile. "You came for me!" It—she, Pellek thought—held out her palm toward them and Pellek was rocked forward on her toes by a weak Force Pull.

"Follani?" Pellek asked in confusion. She was sure this was the same alien child she had spoken to in the city, but that child had not been able to use the Force.

"Jedi Tran, what have you done?" Bastila whispered behind her.

Pellek looked from Bastila's frowning face to the alien child. "What? What do you mean?" she asked. How did Bastila know anything about her?

Bastila paused, and Follani spoke up brightly. "You made me a Force user, like you!"

Atton spoke over her shoulder. "Frack, Pel, could you meet a Sensitive, just once, and _not_ make a Force connection with them? This planet is crawling with aliens who hate the Force, and what do you do? You turn their kids into Jedi!"

"Shut up, Atton," Pellek growled. She knelt in front of the child and felt the Force between them. Sure enough, there was a connection—not fully a Bond, but a tie. Pellek could feel the Force through the child, like she had been able to with Atton and Bao-Dur before they died. She had done it again—built a connection without realizing, opened someone to the Force without intending. "Where is your mother, Follani?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"

Follani blinked at her matter-of-factly. "Using the Force is wrong. They said I have to stay here until I learn not to use it. But now I don't have to, right? You've come to take me with you to the camp in the north?"

Pellek was already shaking her head. "No, I'm not—"

Bastila interrupted. "Where is this camp, child?" Pellek wasn't sure why she was so interesed.

Follani shrugged. "Where the bad people go, the ones who use the Force."

Pellek raised her hands. "Come on, all of you, let's get out of here before someone realizes we've left. We can figure out where to send Follani when we're clear." She turned on her heel and exited the room, leaving Bastila to handle the child. She clenched her fists—how could she have done this again? If it hadn't been for her, Follani would be at home like a normal child, not newly Force Sensitive and sitting in a jail cell. _And Mira wouldn't be dead. And Kreia wouldn't be dead. And the Masters wouldn't be—_

Pellek shook her head roughly and cut off her thoughts. She could practically feel the hole in the Force pulsing inside of her. She had to get out of here, away from all these people who hated the Force.

Pellek took whichever turn seemed the most reasonable and soon found herself in a wide room full of chairs and holoprojectors. There were maybe ten Vintari in the room in various states of activity. A few were listlessly watching the holoprojector; two were playing a game of cards; others seemed to be doing nothing at all. All of them were wearing blinking collars. Attuned to the Force for direction as she was, it was almost a physical shock when Pellek ran into the Force barrier that permeated this room.

She slowed to a stop, staring around her. All of these aliens were Force Sensitive, but the collars were blocking them completely. She realized where they must be.

"This is a hospital," she whispered. A few of the Vintari looked up, then back down without interest.

"More like a mental insitituion," Atton whispered back.

Bastila caught up, now carrying Follani on one hip, and together they made for a locked doorway. It was all Pellek could do not to Boost them all out the door. This place terrified her. Bastila raised a hand and the electronic lock sparked and went dark. Pellek pushed open the door and blinked into the sudden sunlight.

"Well, that was easy," she said. As she said it, an alarm began to sound. _Of course._

She extended her lightsaber and started to run.


	8. Chapter 7

**SEVEN**

Carth finally got his voice back and forced his eyes up from blurry picture of Case. "Where was this picture taken?" he managed in a reasonably even tone.

"In the north," Tepai replied, "near the—"

"So you know this one after all?" Startol interrupted his mate to ask. It was hard to read his expression, but Carth thought he looked more worried than calculating.

Before he could reply, an alarm began to sound in the background. Startol flipped the holoprojector over to a live comm feed and spoke rapidly to the Vintari that appeared in the field. Tepai spoke into her wrist comm and the room was suddenly full of armed guards. Dustil tensed next to him but Carth touched his arm briefly and he settled down. The tension in the room had gotten high enough without them adding to it.

Startol rose from his seat. "Your mates have left the facility without authorization. I am afraid we will have to detain them for further questioning."

"Hang on just a minute," Carth protested. "I'm sure they're just trying to get back to our ship. Why don't you just let us be on our way?"

Startol shook his head. "We will not let your Jedi harm us again." With that, he hefted one of the guard's blaster rifles and led all but two of them out of the office. Tepai remained where she was.

Carth looked sidelong at Dustil, who nodded. They had to get out of here. Carth considered their options, but before he could settle on a strategy, Dustil spoke up. "You want to help us leave," he said quietly to Tepai. He made a familiar gesture with his hand that made Carth's skin crawl.

The Vintari's eyes went glassy. "I want to help you leave," she said dazedly.

Dustil smiled and leaned forward. "Tell the guards to leave the room," he ordered.

Tepai rose and said something to the guards in Vintari. They nodded and left, but not before casting suspicious glances their way. Tepai stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, blinking at Dustil.

"My blasters," Carth whispered to Dustil.

Dustil rose and headed toward the door, gesturing for Carth to follow him. "Take us to our weapons," he said.

Tepai opened a drawer and pulled out two blasters and a lightsaber handle. She held them out in her arms, a frown crossing her features. "I—I don't—I don't know whose—" she said. She looked from Dustil to Carth, fur lightening to a pale gray.

Dustil raised his hands soothingly and took the weapons from her unresisting grip. He handed Carth his blasters and hung his lightsaber from his belt. "That's okay. Don't worry about that. You want to escort us out of here," he said. Carth couldn't feel what he was projecting, of course, but Tepai seemed hardly conscious at all. She nodded slowly and started toward the door. Carth remembered the way Startol talked about the false Jedi making the Vintari help them and shuddered. No one should have this kind of power.

"Come on, Father," Dustil called, breaking his thoughts. Carth hastened to catch up.

* * *

"Go under that speeder, child, hurry!" Bastila said to the little Vintari. She swung the girl to the ground and pushed her toward the nose of a speeder parked nearby. Follani stared at her, wide-eyed and unmoving, until a blaster bolt exploded next to them. Bastila shoved the girl under the speeder. "Stay there!" she shouted before turning to the fray. 

Pellek was keeping three Vintari back with her single-bladed saber. Four more Vintari carrying blaster rifles were running toward her. Bastila Boosted herself to meet them, yellow blades extended. With two swift moves, she knocked two of the rifles from the attackers' hands. The disarmed aliens backed away slowly, hands on vibroblade hilts that they seemed reluctant to draw.

"Bastila, behind you!" Atton shouted. Bastila swung around too late to completely dodge a blaster bolt from one of the three Pellek had been fighting. It glanced off her shoulder, numbing her right arm to the fingers. Her weapon clattered to the ground, dual blades sputtering out. The Vintari sneered and shouted something taunting.

Anger blossomed in her chest and her vision briefly whited out. Bastila could feel the open conduit of Dark power in the Force, just waiting for her to draw upon it. It would take only a little Lightning to destroy all of these terrified sentients, and they would never challenge her again—

Bastila took a breath and consciously pulled on the Light to throw a flurry of Force Pushes toward their attackers. They flew backward, hit the ground hard, and did not rise. The remaining handful recovered quickly and fired off a volley of blaster shots to her. By now, she had her blade back in her hand and deflected them all away. She sent a blast of Heal into her right arm and got some feeling back.

Pellek came up beside her. "We have to close with them and take away their advantage with the blaster," she said. Bastila felt a tendril of the Force accompany Pellek's words, seeking a connection. Bastila blocked it and glanced sharply at the Exile, but the woman was focused entirely on turning the blaster bolts flying toward them. Bastila knew that Pellek made Force connections easily, without thinking, but she hadn't realized just _how _easily she did it. If the woman made a connection with everyone she fought beside, it was no wonder that Malachor nearly broke her.

"Come on!" Pellek shouted, interrupting her train of thoughts. Bastila ran after her, extending a shield around the two of them as they closed with the several aliens. Pellek was a choppy fighter, not graceful as Case had been. It was challenging to get into a rhythm with her. Bastila ducked a vibroblade slash and drove her blade into the chest of her attacker. She felt the alien join the Force, and was tempted again to take the power of the release into herself.

She turned resolutely away and faced the last three fighters. Abruptly, the alarm that had been droning in the background stopped. The remaining Vintari looked at each other and then ran back toward the building complex. Bastila glanced at Pellek. "Do you think they will return with reinforcements?" she asked.

Pellek was frowning toward the building. "No, look what they're doing—they're fortifying." And it was true—forcefields were snapping into place around the doors and Bastila could see the shadows of armed Vintari posted at the windows. No one was going to get back in the building uninvited. "Atton," Pellek said to the ghost, "what's happened to the Onasis?"

Atton blinked out for a second and then back in. He pointed toward the far end of the complex, half a kilometer away. "Down there—they're on their way out of the building. I think they might be the reason for the lockdown."

Pellek jogged to the speeder that Follani was still hiding underneath, glancing briefly as passed the five Vintari bodies in the courtyard. Bastila followed more slowly, still catching her breath from the battle. Atton hung back with her. "I had to resist it, too," he said quietly.

Bastila swallowed. _How did he know?_ "I—I'm afraid I don't know what you mean," she lied.

"Yes, you do," he said without looking at her. "The Dark side. It's right there in front of you, and it's so much more powerful than the Light. You could end the fight so much quicker if you used it, just for a second."

She opened her mouth, pious denials ready, but she couldn't get them out this time. "Yes," she whispered. Relief washed over her—she had finally admitted it to someone. Certainly no one at the Jedi Enclave had understood what it was like to be tempted every time she touched the Force. Ever since Malak—

Atton jerked his chin toward the Exile, now picking Follani up and putting her in the back of the speeder. "Pel talks a big talk, but she's as Blue as it gets. I could never have told her what the Force was like for me. It was beautiful—still is, actually—but it used to be scary as hell, too." He grinned. "It's easier now that I'm dead. I just sort of exist in the Light—all of my alignment choices are behind me."

Bastila finally faced him. "So you were able to resist it—even at the end?" She knew from Carth that Atton had been killed by one of the Sith Lords on Malachor.

He smiled, and Bastila could almost feel the joy. "Yeah. I did." He leaned in, eyes warm. "And you can do it, too, Princess. It's not easy, but it's worth it."

"Let's go, you two!" Pellek shouted from the speeder. "Atton, quit hitting on Jedi Shan and let's get out of here before they send out attack droids."

Atton winked at Bastila. "Come on, Pel, look what she's wearing! I'm just trying to stake a claim before Onasi Junior gets his hands on her. He has all the advantages—he's younger than me, his father's a war hero, he's alive."

The two continued to bicker as Bastila got into the back of the speeder with Follani. She hid her smile behind a haughty expression. Atton was no more flirting with her than he was Pellek, but she knew now that he was her friend, and she expected very soon to need all the friends she could get.

* * *

Carth, Dustil, and Tepai walked for some time in silence, getting occasional odd looks from passing Vintari, but no one stopped them. The alarm was still going, which Carth hoped meant that Pellek and Bastila hadn't been recaptured. If they could just get out of the building— 

"Tepai!" a passing Vintari in some kind of uniform said. It followed with a burst of its own language. Tepai stopped and looked around confusedly, then said something in a slow tone, gesturing listlessly at Dustil. The new alien's brow furrowed and its fur darkened. It spoke sharply back to Tepai.

"Frack," Dustil muttered. He waved his hand toward the newcomer. "You want to be on your way," he intoned.

The alien just looked at him and frowned. It said something to Tepai urgently. Tepai shook her head and blinked several times. A look of slow horror came across her face. She said something in Vintari and then, pointing a shaking finger at Dustil, "You made me do this! You are one of them! I am shamed, I am _cartuk_!" She yanked up her arm and shouted something into her wrist comm.

"Let's go, Dustil," Carth warned, scanning the hallway for exits.

Dustil waved his hand toward Tepai again. "Leave us," he said. But his mind tricks weren't working anymore. The two aliens stared angrily back at them as a new alarm began to flash.

"Dustil!" Carth snapped.

"Fine," Dustil growled, flinging his hand toward the two aliens. They both froze in a pink Stasis field, faces a study in terror. Dustil ran past Carth. "I can get us out," he said.

Carth ran after his son, blasters ready. Dustil took turns seemingly at random until they found themselves in a long hallway with a door at the end. Before they could get to it, Startol and ten soldiers ran in from a cross passage and blocked their exit. "Stop!" Startol shouted.

"Startol, we don't want to hurt you," Carth began, knowing there was no way he and Dustil could fight all of the soldiers.

"You are just like the others!" Startol shouted. "You are _navein_, beneath contempt." He gestured and the soldiers behind him fired.

Carth jumped in front of Dustil out of instinct, fully expecting to feel the blaster fire tearing into his chest. Instead, a blue field snapped around him and the blaster bolts bounced harmlessly away. He looked behind in surprise to see Dustil smirking, hand cupped to project a shield.

"Honestly, Father, did you think I'd let them shoot us?" he asked. Dustil walked toward the group of guards, green blade blazing before him. "I'll give you three seconds to get out of our way," he said in a menacing tone.

The guards probably didn't understand him, but there was no mistaking his intent. Five of the guards dropped their rifles and scattered. Dustil threw his palm toward the group. The other five guards flew backward and hit the ground hard before freezing into Stasis. Only Startol stood his ground, or perhaps Dustil had let him remain standing.

"You are _navein_," the Vintari spat.

Dustil narrowed his eyes in a way that froze Carth's blood. "And _you_ are blind, running from things you don't understand, keeping your children in the dark because you're afraid of their strength. The Sith you defeated must have been weak, because I could kill you before you could blink."

"Dustil, stop this. Let's go," Carth said.

Dustil glanced at him, then back to Startol. "_Get out of our way_," he whispered, the Persuasion so strong in his voice that Carth felt a little lightheaded himself.

Startol scuttled backward and into the cross passage. Dustil didn't so much as glance at him as he strode past and out the door. Carth looked as he followed and was taken aback by the expression on the Vintari's face. Startol looked like a sentient whose spirit had been broken.

Dustil was waiting for him outside the building. They were on the outskirts of the city. Dustil pointed to a speeder in the distance. "That's Pellek and Bastila," he said. "No one's going to follow us out of the city, not with Startol and his men incapacitated. We're home free." He must have seen something in Carth's face, because he frowned. "What?" he asked. "We got out of there without hurting anyone—I'd say that's better than they deserved."

Carth pictured the fear on Tepai's face and wasn't so sure. "Yeah," he muttered. "Let's get out of here." Dustil opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. Carth jogged past him and toward the approaching speeder.

"Need a ride, Admiral?" Pellek asked with a smile. Bastila was in the back of the speeder. Carth swung in next to the Exile and glanced back toward the city. True to Dustil's prediction, it looked utterly deserted—no one had come outside after them.

"How many Force tricks did it take for you to get the speeder, Pellek?" Carth forced a small smile and tried to get Dustil's behavior out of his head.

The Exile waited for Dustil to get in next to Bastila before taking off at high speed toward the _Hawk_. "It was the damnedest thing," she said. "We got out of there and alarms started going off, but we'd only fought a few of them when everyone ran away. They've fortified the whole complex. You and Dustil must have done a number on them inside."

"These sentients fear the Force like none I have ever seen," Bastila commented.

"Hey, who is this?" Dustil exclaimed.

Carth twisted around in his seat to see a small Vintari, clearly a child, huddled on the floorboard near Bastila. It was looking up at Dustil fearfully. "Are you going to make me go back there?" it asked him in a small voice.

Carth looked at Pellek in surprise. She shook her head. "We were in some kind of mental institution for Force users. Follani is the one who spoke to me in the city—she's Force Sensitive."

Dustil had a dark expression on his face. "They sent her to a _mental institution_ because she was Sensitive?" he asked. "We can't take her back there."

Pellek rolled her eyes and turned back to her flying. "Sure, Dustil, we'll just take her to the Jedi temple for the Masters to train. Except that there aren't any. While you and Revan were out looking for 'True Sith,' some actual Sith showed up and killed all the Jedi."

"Who the hell do you think you are?" Dustil growled.

Bastila raised her hands. "Stop it, both of you. This is not productive. Follani told us that there is a Force-user settlement in the north." She looked down at the small alien. "Are you sure it truly exists?" she asked. Follani nodded but didn't volunteer further information.

Carth looked at Dustil. "Tepai said Case was in the north." He tried vainly to crush the hope that bubbled up from the thought of her so near.

Bastila leaned forward, an odd look on her face. "Case? Here?"

Dustil was already shaking his head as Pellek stopped the speeder near the _Hawk_. "She's not here," he said.

"But the holocording—" Carth began.

"I know what it looked like, Father, but I'm telling you that she is not on this moon, at least not anymore." Dustil got out of the speeder and ran a hand through his hair. "I felt her in the Force, before we were captured, and she told me she's on a planet called Espol."

"Espol?" Pellek looked up from the speeder's controls. "It's been a long time, but I'm sure that's where Revan told me she and Malak were headed after the War. Something about an artifact that would help the Jedi. I'd always assumed that they gave up looking for it when they found the Star Forge."

Bastila paced in front of the _Hawk_, head down in thought. "There is a holocron on Dantooine, one of the few remaining after Malak's attack, that mentions an ancient place of power. Master Vrook found the holocron in a room that had been sealed over until the attack. That is why he asked me to come to Dantooine, to study it. The ancient Jedi scholars who first studied the artifact could not tell whether the place it described was of the Light or Dark, but the holocron is clear that the place is the "source" or "root" of the power." Bastila looked up. "'Espol' means "source" in the Ancient Sith language."

Pellek had her head cocked in a way that meant she was listening to her ghost. She translated for Carth's benefit. "Atton says he heard it mentioned once when he was still with the Sith. It was someplace you didn't want to get sent."

Carth felt very much out of his league. He could just imagine telling Admiral Dodonna that he was flying away from a planet where he had actually seen a recording of Case based on an inconclusive Jedi text and a report from a ghost. He sighed and tried to remind himself that this was just another type of intelligence, no different than a report on enemy troop readiness or domestic stability predictions. And the intel seemed pretty clear as to what they should do next. "All right," he said finally. "Then we're going to Espol."

Dustil nodded in satisfaction, but Pellek frowned. "What about Follani?" she asked. "We can't take her with us."

The little alien was standing close to the speeder, watching their conversation with wide eyes. Carth didn't think she was much older than Caele and Tar back on Citadel Station. He crouched down next to her. "Don't you want to go back to your parents?" he asked her quietly. "I'm sure they're worried about you."

Follani shook her head fiercely. "They're afraid of me, like they were afraid of my sister, but she escaped from the hospital and went to the camp in the north. I want to go there, can't you take me?"

Bastila spoke up. "I will take her. If the Vintari you met are correct and Case was here, I wish to understand why."

"We don't have time for that!" Dustil exclaimed. "We've wasted enough time on this moon as it is."

Bastila looked thoughtful. "I think the Force has guided me here for a reason. You can pick me up on your return to Republic space."

Carth shook his head. "No way. We're not leaving you alone on a planet of people who hate the Force. It's too dangerous."

The Jedi smiled, and Carth was struck by the look in her eyes. She was fifteen years his junior, but she looked like she'd lived a lifetime already. "Admiral, I appreciate your concern, but I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I will not be caught unawares this time." She looked to Dustil. "I'd like to look at your map of the moon—if this camp is large enough, it should appear there." The two of them went up the gangplank into the _Hawk_, Follani trailing behind.

Carth found himself alone with Pellek. He pulled the engine manifold out of his pack and was glad to find it still undamaged. "I don't suppose your ghost can hold a flashlight while I fix this engine?"

Pellek smiled. "No, his handiness is strictly limited to locating parts and making wisecracks at my expense. But I can hold one for you. The sooner we get off this rock, the better."

"Roger that, sister." Carth headed up the gangplank, relieved to be putting this interruption behind them. He passed Bastila and Dustil bent over the holomap in the main hold. Dustil kept shifting his weight back and forth, rubbing his palms on his pants.

There was something odd about Bastila's sudden interest in that camp, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Equally odd was the increasing agitation in Dustil and the flashes of—anger? fear?—he kept seeing cross his son's face. Maybe it was just Carth's growing unease with Jedi circumspection, but something felt increasingly wrong about this mission.

It was a familiar feeling, that coil of distrust in his gut. He had gotten good at ignoring it, and he did so now, shutting down the engine power and handing Pellek a flashlight before sliding under the engine casing. He told himself he was overreacting, that the only thing that mattered was finding Case as soon as possible. His paranoia was just getting in the way.

But he couldn't help thinking that it was usually right.

* * *

Bastila glanced backward from the speeder to see the _Ebon Hawk_ lift smoothly off the ground and streak out of the atmosphere. She waved half-heartedly, even though she knew no one on the ship could see her. The moon seemed suddenly silent. 

She turned back to look where she was flying. "Well, Follani, it's just the two of us," she said, trying for a cheerful tone.

The little alien shifted in her seat. "Are we going to the camp now?" she asked, her voice tipping toward a whine.

"Do you truly not know where it is?" Bastila asked for the third time. It hadn't appeared on Dustil's rough map of the surface, which meant it either didn't exist or it was too small for the ship's radar to pick up. The moon was small compared to the gas giant it orbited, but it was far too large for them to search in a speeder.

The camp _had_ to exist. Now that she knew Case had been here, she was even more convinced that the Force had brought her to Vintar for a reason. There were too many coincidences—reaching Citadel Station just as Dustil arrived, Dustil projecting through the Force twice and attracting the Vintari each time, and now Case.

Bastila sent a gentle probe toward Follani, but the child's mind was still too disorganized for her to find anything without hurting her. And it was apparent that she didn't really know anything about this mythical Force-user camp except for rumor. Bastila sighed. She had no choice, then.

A lone figure was waiting for them a couple of kilometers from the town. Bastila slowed the speeder to a stop.

"I thought we were going to the camp!" Follani wailed.

Bastila bent down and placed a hand on each of Follani's shoulders. She stared into the child's wide eyes. "It will be well in the end, Follani, I promise," Bastila whispered. "Please just trust me." She stepped off of the speeder and walked calmly to the waiting Vintari. She inclined her head. "Greetings, Tepai. I told you I would return."

Tepai returned her nod solemnly. Bastila could feel the sentient's fear, colored by a hint of satisfaction. Startol had objected to this arrangement, had told Tepai that Bastila would betray them. The Vintari held up a collar. "You must not resist," she said.

Bastila clenched her eyes and fists as she bent down to allow Tepai to close the collar around her throat. It hummed loudly in her ears and the world became indistinct. The Force was gone.


	9. Chapter 8

**EIGHT**

Dustil gave the punching bag a final hit and stepped back to catch his breath. His hands already ached from the workout, which didn't bode well for how they would feel tomorrow. The _Hawk_ had been in hyperspace for three days, and his usual workout with his lightsaber wasn't doing enough to ease the anxiety that made his palms sweat and his head hurt. Bastila's absence, too, was grating on him. He hadn't realized how much her presence in the Force had helped keep him focused. Now all he had was Pellek, whose suspicious glances did nothing to help ease the buzzing in his head.

Physically but still not mentally exhausted after a shower, Dustil wandered into the galley in the hope of finding something to soothe his nerves. Carth looked up from a datapad when he walked in and nodded in greeting. Dustil dug through the small storage area and came up with a bottle of Corellian whiskey. "Want a glass?" he asked his father.

Carth checked his chrono. "Better not. My watch starts in an hour. But don't let me stop you."

Dustil dropped into the seat across from Carth and managed to pour himself a glass without his hands shaking. He knocked back a mouthful and grimaced as it burned to his stomach. "I've never developed a taste for this stuff," he said ruefully.

Carth smiled a little. "It was your mother's drink of choice—I was strictly a beer man until I met her." The pause hanging between them became awkward, as it always did when they discussed Dustil's mother. Carth cleared his throat. "So, what are you still doing up? You should sleep when you have the chance on a ship—you never know when we're going to crash on an unfriendly moon."

Dustil snorted. "Like you should talk. I mean, if I've seen you sleep for six hours straight since we left Citadel Station, I'd be surprised."

Carth shrugged. "I don't, much." There was something in his quick look away that told Dustil his lack of sleep wasn't voluntary. Carth fiddled with the datapad for a minute before changing the subject again. "On Vintar, you said that you'd spoken to Case. What did you mean by that?"

Dustil took another swig of the whiskey. He should have known that his father wouldn't have missed that slip, but he really wished it could have waited until after they found Case. He had decided five years ago not to tell his father that he'd created a Force Bond with Case, but he didn't see how he could avoid revealing it now. He tried evasion first. "You know, through the Force."

Evasion didn't work. "I've never heard of two Jedi doing that before," Carth said mildly, but Dustil could feel the hard look his father was giving him. He hated that it made him feel like he was eight years old again and trying not to tell his father that he'd broken their neighbor's window.

Dustil sighed. "She and I have a Force Bond," he admitted. _But I didn't mean to, Father, honest! The baird ball just went over my head._

There was a long silence. "I see," Carth replied finally. "You know, I think I'll have a drink, after all." Dustil handed his father a glass and watched as Carth poured a stiff measure of whiskey. He drained it in two quick pulls. "I suppose the two of you decided it would be better for me not to know about it."

"Well, it wasn't that, it was just—"

Carth leaned forward, hands clasped hard in front of him. "What exactly were you doing out there for five years?" His voice was low.

Dustil could feel the suspicion in his father's voice, and his first instinct was to snap back at him, reject his questions. Who the hell was he, anyway, to suggest that Dustil hadn't been acting in the best interest of the Republic? Carth wasn't a Jedi; he hadn't been there to keep off the kinrath spiders and suspicious officials while Case found one more obscure clue in a cave or forgotten archive. He hadn't heard Case's nightmares in his head if they stayed in one place too long. He hadn't spent three months on a Force-forsaken gray planet, fighting his way to the True Sith, only to realize that they had badly underestimated their enemy's strength. His father had no right to question him.

Dustil took a breath and forced down the anger that always seemed about to overcome him. The question wasn't unreasonable—they had been gone for five years without any word. He wondered if his father had thought he and Case were dead. _But he doesn't even know me, _his mind protested, even as he delivered the proper answer. "We were always looking for the True Sith, Father, like I've told you. Case didn't know where they were—she just remembered pieces and hints from after the Mandalorian Wars. We found hints of them all over the Unknown Regions, but we never saw them until Espol. I don't think either of us expected that there would be so many of them, or that they would be so strong."

Carth seemed to consider his answer for a long time before he finally nodded. Dustil knew he wasn't satisfied, but it was enough, for now. Carth smiled a little. "Did she keep that ridiculous targeting visor on the whole time?"

Dustil laughed, glad to let the conversation move back to lighter territory. "Yeah, she said you hated that thing. She claimed it helped her focus on her targets, and she kicked my ass enough in practice that I didn't disagree with her."

Instead of the laugh Dustil was hoping for, Carth seemed to draw into himself. He stared at the plasynth table for long enough that Dustil contemplated leaving the room. Finally Carth looked up. "What color are her eyes?" he asked quietly.

Dustil was caught off guard. "What?"

Carth's expression was utterly neutral. "I can't remember what color they are. You can't tell in the victory tour holos. I mean, she's blond, so you'd think they'd be blue or green, but I have this idea that they're brown, but maybe I'm thinking of your mother." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I just—just don't remember."

Dustil didn't know how to react to this suddenly vulnerable version of his father. "Brown," he said finally. "Her eyes are brown."

Carth nodded, like Dustil had confirmed a hyperspace route or the time of day. He got up without another word and walked toward the cockpit.

Dustil stared after him for a long moment, then poured himself another glass of whiskey.

* * *

Pellek saw the Admiral come into the cockpit through his reflection on the viewscreen. She scooped her pazaak cards into one hand. "You're early," she remarked. 

"Yeah," he replied. "I'll take the rest of your shift."

"And what if I want to spend another hour staring at hyperspace lines? Just because you're the military man doesn't mean you get to keep all the monotonous fun to yourself." Carth didn't respond. She spun the pilot's chair around. She couldn't read him very well, but his closed expression told her she could either retreat or have a heartfelt discussion with him about Revan. She stood. "Right. Comm me if you need anything," she said.

Carth nodded, and Pellek slid past him and back out to the main hold. She took a right and entered the galley. Dustil was leaning forward on his elbows, hand wrapped around a glass of her Corellian. His expression was a mirror of his father's, and Pellek was about to keep moving when he glanced up and raised his glass. "Want a drink?" he asked.

A drink, she could use. She slid into the chair opposite him and reached for a glass. "I don't know much about Telos," she remarked, "but in most places, it's polite to ask before you start drinking someone else's stash."

"It's yours, then? I thought it was Father's." He raised the half-empty bottle and smiled ironically. "Mind if I have some?"

Pellek took the bottle and poured herself three fingers. "It's all right. There's four more where that came from. The good thing about Atton being dead is that he can't run down my stock anymore." She shook her head. "The man could put away liquor like you've never seen and still rob you blind in pazaak."

"I thought you had to be a really powerful Jedi to have Force ghosts attached to you. And you're—" Dustil stopped.

Pellek grinned. "Not? A 'mediocre Jedi' is how my Master put it on the day I left to join Revan."

"Case," Dustil corrected.

Pellek rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I heard that's what she's calling herself these days. I guess it's only reasonable—it'd be hard to attract followers if people knew you were the greatest Genocide in the history of the galaxy." She couldn't quite keep the venom out of her voice.

The air in the galley seemed suddenly colder. Dustil appraised her through half-closed eyes, an unsettling smile playing on his lips. "You know that's not true."

Pellek raised her eyebrows. "Her minions destroyed your home planet, Dustil. She killed millions before Bastila captured her."

Dustil tipped his chair back on two legs and stared at the ceiling. "Let me see if I can remember exactly how you put it to your technician. 'We have to end this war, however it can be done,' right? _You_ gave the order on Malachor. _You_ stood there and watched the Mandalorians die."

"Yes," Pellek protested, "but it was—I had to—"

Dustil continued like she hadn't spoken. "_You_ decided not to evacuate the seven hundred thousand Republic ground troops before you killed them all. The Mandalorians were already on their way to defeat—there was no need to destroy Malachor. And now the Mandalorians are all but wiped out. _You're_ the Genocide, Pellek, not Case."

Pellek could barely breathe. _How could he know what she saw?_ Pellek could feel the cold walls of her warship around her, see Malachor crumbling on the viewscreen, feel the extinction of her Force connections, one after another, faster and faster until there was nothing, only emptiness rushing up toward her—

The square edges of the glass bit deeply into the sides of her palm and Pellek forced herself to take a breath. She leaned across the table. "Believe me," she growled, "I don't need you to tell me that my crimes are inexcusable. I know that they are. But I would very much like for you to tell me what you think you're trying to do here. Are you trying to push me to the Dark Side, Dustil? Do you think you're strong enough to succeed when Revan failed?"

Dustil stood. "I don't think you want to find out how strong I am."

Pellek looked up at him. His muscles were as taut as if he were in Stasis. He was daring her, begging her, to challenge him. All she had to do was rise to her feet, and a fight would be inevitable. She kept her seat. "Have you fallen, Dustil?" she whispered.

Dustil raised a hand, his aura flashing red like a solar flare, but then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. His aura collapsed to gray-blue. He dropped slowly to his chair and drained his glass with a shaking hand. "I—I don't know," he whispered. Dustil cradled his head in his hands. "Gods, I think I'm losing my mind."

Pellek touched his arm with her hand. "What happened out there, Dustil? What happened to Case? What happened to you?"

Dustil lurched to his feet and backed away from her. "I don't know. I told you I don't know. I can't remember—" He closed his eyes for a moment, then blurted disjointedly, "I'm just tired. We're close and I'm having trouble keeping focused. But I'm fine. I'll be fine once we find her. I just need—I'll be in the port quarters." He stumbled out of the galley.

Pellek took a slow sip of whiskey and watched him go. She thought his distress was genuine, but there was a strong feeling of wrongness in the air. _I can't remember_, he'd said for the first time. That was different than _I don't know_.

"He is a very troubled young man," Bao-Dur said. She looked to her right to see him near the storage compartment.

"Yeah, troubled like someone leading us into a trap," she muttered. "Why am I doing this again, Bao? As far as I'm concerned, Revan, or Case, or whatever she's calling herself, can just stay lost."

Bao-Dur smiled, his spikes less menacing with the grin. "I can't see the future, General. But I can see your aura, and it's less shadowed than it was on Dxun. I don't know why we're on this mission, but I know that the Force has something for us to do."

His words were so "Jedi" that she couldn't help but smile and shake her head. "You sound like Bastila, my friend. All this Force mysticism makes my head hurt." She drained her glass and considered pouring another, but Bao-Dur's pointed glance dissuaded her.

She stood up and put the bottle away. "All right! You don't have to nag," she said. Bao-Dur gave a mock-salute and faded away. Pellek shook her head and headed for her quarters. They were only about three days from where Carth had calculated Espol to be, but they couldn't get there fast enough to suit her.

If the Force had something for her to do, she wished it would get on with it already and let her get back to real life, whatever that was.

* * *

"Seriously, Caele, if you don't stop whining, I am going to actually die." Mission rubbed her forehead and pondered the unreasonableness of reasoning with a two-year-old. She pushed back from her computer terminal and looked at the unhappy child. "Could you please give me thirty minutes to finish this report? Then I will be happy to take you to the playground for as long as you want." 

Caele shook her head. "Now, now." Tar sat nearby, one eye on the drama unfolding in Mission's office, the other on the blocks he was carefully stacking.

"Would you like for me to take the herdlings to the playground?" Kaxtrax's large form shadowed Mission's doorway.

"Kax!" Tar called cheerfully to the Ithorian, waving a block at her.

"Gods, Kax, would you?" Mission asked. "The daycare was closed today for that flu going around, and I _have_ to get this report done before the committee meets." She grinned at her friend. "I totally owe you—I'll dogsit next time you're off-station."

Kaxtrax grimaced in what passed for an Ithorian smile. "You may wish otherwise when you see how large Domo has become. The new breed of kath hound has done well on the surface, but they are much larger than the last generation." She held out her arms to the children. "Come, herdlings, let us go." The twins followed her out, Caele practically bouncing as she walked.

Mission sighed into the blessed silence. She loved the kids more than she could express, but she was grateful for her friends' help when Jan was on away missions. She didn't expect him back for another six weeks, and this was an important period for the Telos Reconstruction Project. The Senate Committee for the Project was meeting on the surface in a week to approve the next phase of the reconstruction. If they didn't approve the funds, the Project would grind to a halt, leaving vast areas of the planet to run wild.

Mission worked steadily for the next hour on the report. As usual, she was trying to mediate the sometimes expansive requests of the Ithorian restorers with the more pragmatic concerns of the Senate monitors. She was putting the final touches on the executive summary when an alarm went off on her monitor.

She frowned, looking for a long time at the blinking red light. That particular alarm was for unauthorized activity in the Polar Regions. Since the evacuation after the flu outbreak five years ago, no one was permitted to be on the surface without authorization and protection. She knew a few holdouts were still hiding on the planet, but no one had been in the Polar Regions since the Exile cleaned out that Echani woman's stronghold last year.

The alarm light flashed for several more seconds before abruptly going out. "Well, that's weird," she said to herself. Maybe a kath hound had wandered into the region before being caught by the defense systems. But she thought that was unlikely.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at her door. "Yeah?" she asked distractedly.

"That kind of greeting makes a man happy to be home early," a familiar voice said wryly.

Mission spun around. "Jan! What are you doing back?"

Her husband smiled warmly at her, arms crossed nonchalantly across his chest. He was still in his uniform. "Somebody at the Fleet got our orders crossed with another squadron's and we both showed up to make our hyperspace jumps at the same time. They sent our squadron home for resupply before we ship back out tomorrow." He grinned. "The Captain was pretty irritated, but I don't mind the delay."

She returned his grin. "Well, Kaxtrax has the kids at the playground, and I bet we have a good hour before they wear her out."

He raised his eyebrows. "Then, Mrs. Valenta, I think we should take advantage of an empty apartment."

"Yeah, let me shut this down." Mission closed out of her report. The red alarm light was still out. On a whim, she set a couple of satellite cameras to monitor the borders of the Polar Regions. She couldn't shake the feeling that something odd was going on down there. "Okay, Lieutenant Valenta, let's remind ourselves that we're still young." He slung his arm across her shoulders and they left her office together.

As she left, Mission saw out of the corner of her eye the red light on her monitor reactivate and begin blinking slowly.


	10. Chapter 9

**NINE**

Somehow, Bastila had known she was going to sacrifice herself before the opportunity had even presented itself. Unfortunately, that certainty, hitting her suddenly as she stood in the empty hallway of the _Leviathan,_ did nothing to douse her fear. She had never been more afraid in her entire life. Not when she captured Revan, not when she fell from the _Endar Spire_ in a tiny escape pod, not when she faced the krayt dragon on Tatooine. She stood less than ten meters from Darth Malak, and all she could do was watch Case's face and cringe in terror.

Case glanced from Malak to Bastila and back, a confused half-smile on her face, like she thought they were trying to trick her. Blood was soaking through the side of the woman's left trouser leg, but Bastila didn't think Case had even noticed it. They were all running on adrenaline, still spiked from the torture at Saul Karath's hands, still humming from the battle on the bridge.

Case blinked. "But that doesn't make sense," she said.

Bastila watched as Case thought about Malak's words, about Bastila's admission. Her expression slowly changed from confusion to realization. "Then," she started slowly, dark eyes boring into Bastila, "everything you've told me was a lie?"

Malak laughed, a horrible mechanical sound that shook Bastila to the core. _What have I done?_ she asked herself. She had betrayed a woman she had admired as a youngling, stolen her entire identity, yet pushed her to remember enough of the Force to lead her to the Star Maps. She had allowed the _Ebon Hawk's_ crew to trust her, to rely upon her, all for the sake of reaching the maps. Bastila couldn't bear to even look at Carth, who was radiating enough self-loathing and hatred to turn ten padawans to the Dark Side. She had betrayed all of them.

Before she could say anything, though, she was stricken by a powerful Stasis field. She struggled but could only watch as Case chased Malak down the hallway of the _Leviathan_. With a frantic twist, Bastila broke the Stasis fields around herself and Carth. She stumbled to catch her balance, feeling exhaustion soaking into her very bones. "Case will return," she said, feeling the woman's presence through their Bond.

Carth didn't respond. Bastila glanced at him, seeing with some alarm that he was weaving on his feet. His armor sported a large hole in the right flank, scorched around the edge with blaster fire. He growled something low in his throat and jammed an adrenal stim in his thigh. He steadied and finally seemed to notice her. "You have to get off this ship," he said.

"Case must escape with us," she said firmly.

Carth laughed without a trace of humor. "I don't think so, sister. I'll go down myself before I let that schutta back on the _Hawk_." He pulled a thermal detonator from his pack. "You'd better get started back to the ship," he warned again, and Bastila realized he was going to blow up himself and take Malak and Case with him.

"No, Carth! We need her for the last Star Map! I don't know where it is!" Bastila came to a quick decision and waved her hand before her. Carth was resistant to the Force, but she knew he was injured and exhausted. "You will take Case back to the _Hawk_," she intoned, voice full of Persuasion.

Carth blinked and shook his head, but his eyes glassed over. "I'll take her back to the _Hawk_," he said dully. He put the thermal detonator back in his pack.

Bastila hated herself. She had never used the Force to control her companions, but she had to ensure that Case survived—all of their efforts, all of her lies and hypocrisy and betrayal, would come to nothing if Case didn't find the last Star Map and destroy the Star Forge. Pounding boots rang toward them and Case appeared, a new saber slash in her left arm and panting heavily.

"I can't beat him," she wheezed. "We've got to go now."

They hadn't gotten a hundred meters away when Malak stepped out of a side corridor and blocked their exit. "You didn't think you would escape so easily, did you, Revan?" he sneered.

Case looked over at Bastila. Case had a bit of a smile on her face, as if to say, _Well, we tried_. Bastila could feel Case's anger through the Bond, but the anger was overlaid with forgiveness. "You had to weigh the costs, Bastila," Case said. "I would have done the same thing."

Bastila almost sobbed with relief, and shame. Case had been frustrating, insisting upon obeying Jedi principles only when they were advantageous to a particular situation. As much as Bastila had pushed, Case's aura never moved beyond blue-gray. But she didn't deserve this. Bastila glanced at Malak, waiting with a predatory smile in his eyes, then at the determined glint in Case's.

When it came down to it, there was really only one thing to do. "The Force fights with me!" Bastila shouted, racing forward with her double blades out.

"No!" Case shouted.

Bastila flung herself at Malak, blades spinning in a Flurry. She felt the bulkhead door behind her and pulled it roughly to the ground with the Force. It fell with a crash, and she heard Case pounding futilely on the other side.

Her concentration divided, Malak easily deflected her attack and flung her into the wall. She banged her head and blinked dazedly for several seconds while her mind screamed at her to get up. Malak's huge shadow loomed over her and he grabbed the front of her robes. She dangled helplessly in the air, without even the strength to project a shield.

"Bastila Shan," Malak said. "I have use for you." He clenched his other fist and she couldn't breathe.

Her lungs screaming for air, Bastila reached for the Force Bond she had with Case. She and Carth were on their way back to the ship. They would escape. She felt the question in the Bond, felt Case's fear for her. Bastila knew that she couldn't let Case feel what was about to happen to her. She sent her regret, then snapped the Bond.

Its absence would have left her gasping if she'd had any air left to do it. She was alone, now. Utterly alone—

"Hello?" she heard. Someone was shaking her shoulder. "Come on, new girl, wake up."

Bastila opened eyes that felt like titansteel and blinked blearily upward. An unfocused face peered down at her. Malak! She threw her palm out in a Force Push. Nothing happened. Bastila leapt to her feet, but her knees betrayed her and she sank back toward the ground. Strong hands caught her arms and kept her upright. "No!" she gasped. "I will not turn!"

"Hey, hey, calm down," her captor said. The words penetrated to her spinning head and she realized that the voice was warm, not mechanical like Malak's had been.

She gasped a few lungfuls of air and blinked hard. The blur holding her sharpened slightly into a vaguely human figure. _Vintar_, she remembered, trying to slow her racing heart. _You sacrificed yourself again_. Bastila locked her knees and forced herself to remain upright. She raised her hands. "I am well, thank you," she said, hating the tremble in her voice.

The human-shaped blur laughed, not unkindly. "If that's true, Master Jedi, then I am a free man."

"Who are you?" she asked, squinting toward him. Her voice echoed strangely in her ears. She rubbed her eyes and could make out a tall man with broad shoulders and light hair.

"It's the collar," he said, gesturing toward his own neck at a dull metallic torque. "It makes you stupid at first, but you get used to it. I'm Gellan Mar."

"Bastila Shan," she replied automatically, realizing too late that her name might be recognized. But Gellan just continued to watch her with a mildly interested expression, betraying no surprise at her name. They were in a large room, not unlike the area she and Pellek had gone through to escape. Perhaps ten sentients, none Vintari, were watching her with various degrees of interest. Bastila saw that she was in loose white pants and a tunic, her lightsaber no longer on her. The fog around her senses seemed to thicken, and she felt suddenly vulnerable. _What have I done?_

Gellan seemed to realize her discomfort and stepped away from her. "I'll be over by the window if you need anything. It's a good idea to keep your wits about you in a place like this, at least as long as you can. Half the sents in here have already lost their minds, and the rest of us are on our way. Just cooperate when they come for you and you'll be fine." He started across the room.

"What are you doing here?" she blurted out. She hadn't expected to find another human in this place.

His voice was bitter. "Contributing to the cause, just like you."

Bastila watched him settle into a chair at the window, puzzled at the meaning of his words. She also wasn't sure why she was in this room with the regular "inpatients." That hadn't been her agreement with Tepai. Everything was fuzzy after the collar—she seemed to recall a woozy ride on the alien's speeder, then arriving back at the building Pellek had thought they escaped. They had taken Follani to another room—

Bastila scanned the room for the little girl, but she wasn't anywhere to be seen. "Follani?" she called softly.

She instinctively reached to find the girl in the Force, but a sharp pain shot up her neck and to the back of her eyes, leaving her gasping and clutching a chair for support. She got her breath back to see Gellan watching her thoughtfully. He didn't get up.

The collar kept her from touching the Force, and worse, punished her for trying. What if no one let her out of it? She didn't think she could work her way out like she had on Taris. She'd be trapped here, alone, without the Force, without anyone. Her vague plan would be defeated before it even began. She felt her chest tighten at the thought.

"Bastila Shan," a voice called from the doorway, scattering her spinning thoughts like hifa chaff. Bastila looked up to see a uniformed Vintari consulting a data pad. "Is there a Bastila Shan here?"

Bastila felt a wave of relief. She would not be left in this room. "I am Bastila Shan," she announced, pleased that her voice was calm.

The Vintari looked unimpressed by her serenity and control. "Fine. This way, please." The alien gestured out the door.

She walked out the door and into a long hallway. The alien took her elbow and directed her through several doors and around corners. Bastila tried to remember where they were going, but her thoughts were slippery. Had they turned left the last time or right? Or perhaps they had just gone straight through that door. It would be so easy to just let herself relax into the fog of the collar, not try to remember the turns—

Bastila shook her head sharply. She had to focus or she'd never get out of here.

"Here," the guard said finally, and left her in a room by herself. It was small and featureless, like the cell she had shared with Pellek. There was a small plasynth table in the center with a chair on either side. A fist-sized cube made of out something resembling the metal of the collar sat in the center of the table.

Bastila tugged experimentally on the door behind her and was unsurprised to find it locked. She had to consciously keep herself from searching the room with the Force. She felt terribly unsafe without it.

The door behind her slid open and Tepai entered. She was wearing the same white clothing that Bastila had on and her fur was a very dark gray. The Vintari nodded gravely and extended a hand toward the table. "Greetings, Bastila. Please sit down." The authority in her voice was unmistakable.

There was no point in resisting. Bastila didn't need the Force to know that there were guards outside of the room. She sat facing the door and folded her hands on the table. "Tepai, I told you I would help you if you allowed my companions to leave. I will keep my promise to you, but surely this collar is not necessary? I can do more to assist you without it."

Tepai settled herself in the chair opposite Bastila. She opened her hand to reveal a small device and pressed a button on it. "We know you are quite strong in the Force, Bastila."

Something strange was happening to the fog around Bastila's mind. It seemed to clear in a very specific way, like a hole opening up in the clouds. She could feel the Force, very faintly, as if from a great distance. She looked at Tepai. "What are you doing?"

Tepai acted as if she couldn't hear her. "Please concentrate on the cube."

"What?" Bastila frowned. She glanced down at the cube and suddenly felt a tug of the Force, out of her and into it. "What are you doing?" she gasped. She fumbled around, tried to pull the Force back to herself, tried to get control of herself, tried to do _anything_. But she couldn't get free.

Bastila lurched forward. She had to get to her feet, had to get out of here. But Tepai held up her palm and Bastila stiffened into Stasis. Bastila stared wide-eyed at the small alien. _Tepai was a Force user_.

Tepai nodded her head. "Yes. Startol and I use my gifts to help our people. Just as you are helping us, Bastila." Her words were terrifyingly sensible, and Bastila was sure she was filling them with Persuasion.

Bastila couldn't tear her concentration away from the cube, and she felt the Force leaking out of her. She couldn't stop the flow and now couldn't even move. She remembered Gellan Mar's words in the common area, _Contributing to the cause, just like you._ This is why the Vintari kept the Force users here, to use them for—what?

Bastila could feel herself weakening and was helpless to stop it. For a terrible moment, she was back in Malak's torture chamber, strapped to a table and feeling the Dark pressing down on her. _This was not supposed to happen!_ And then, abruptly, a tendril of the Force was available to her. "You will not have me!" she shouted, and tugged hard on the Force. She snapped the Stasis field around her and knocked the chair backward.

Lightning came easily to her hand. The door behind Tepai slid open and two guards charged inside. Bastila knew she could destroy all of them, just by throwing her palm forward. She saw Tepai's face, surprise and fear showing plainly. The Vintari's head fur was white.

_You can do it, too, Princess_, Atton had said. Bastila lowered her hand.

The next moment, pain exploded up to her eyes. She thought she screamed before the world went white.

* * *

Bastila came back to herself slowly, suspended in a comfortable white fog. She could just stay here forever, forget all about that—something—that she had to do. As long as she didn't open her eyes, she would be safe. 

"Hey." Someone was shaking her out of her pleasant doze. "Wake up."

Bastila opened her eyes to see Gellan Mar looking down at her. She groaned. "We must stop meeting like this, I think." The inside of her head buzzed painfully.

Gellan stepped back. "You were letting the collar take you, Master Jedi. That's a death sentence."

Bastila eased herself upright and realized she was in a small room like she had been in with Pellek. She was on the low bench. She squinted across the room to where Gellan was awkwardly standing. He looked exhausted, face drawn and pale. She thought he was near her age, but the shadows around his eyes made him look older. "What happened?" she asked.

Gellan crossed his arms. "After my session, they brought me to your collection room, and you were unconscious on the floor. They told me to bring you here." He shrugged. "I suppose they thought I would know what to do with another human."

Bastila nodded, remembering now the sick feeling of the Force being drained out of her. "You knew what they were going to do," she said accusingly.

"It wouldn't have changed anything to tell you, Master Jedi," he said. "I did suggest that you make it easier on yourself and cooperate, but you obviously didn't. They don't take enough to kill us, just enough to keep their precious Force shields up."

Bastila frowned. "But why keep Force users against their will just to keep other Force users out? There must be more to their plans than that." She looked harder at Gellan. "How long have you been here?"

"I don't know, you lose track in this place. A year, maybe, or two."

Bastila just barely stopped herself before trying to feel Gellan's aura in the Force. "What did you do before?" she asked. It was so hard to gauge people just by their words and expressions.

"I'm a farmer," he said. She must have shown her surprise, because he smiled. "No, the Jedi Temple doesn't get all of us. I was on my way from Deralia to Ithoria to see about a new strain of chula wood when my ship was attacked by pirates. I made the mistake of defending myself with the Force, and they realized they could get a better price for me alive than dead. I woke up here with this collar around my neck." He rapped it with his knuckles. "I hope they had a nice memorial service for me at home."

Bastila shook her head carefully and was able to clear most of the fog. It was still there, lurking seductively in the back of her mind, but she could think around it. She stood. "I have no intention of remaining here forever," she said firmly. "There must be a way out."

Gellan laughed hollowly. "I felt that way when I first came here, too. All thoughts like that get you is disappointment." He gestured out of the doorway and into the hall, business-like again. "The sleeping quarters are unlocked, and you can go freely to the library at one end or the common area at the other. They take us for sessions with the cube every two or three days. The Vintari won't trouble you if you play along, but they'll waste no time shocking you senseless if it even looks like you're trying to escape."

Bastila smiled. "In that case, we will have to not look like we're trying."

Gellan shook his head. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't share your optimism, Master Jedi," he said. "I've taken all the shockings I care to in this lifetime." He rubbed his eyes tiredly. "If you'll excuse me," he said, and left the room.

Bastila watched him go, frowning. So the Vintari were actually _buying_ Force users for their project, whatever it was. She thought suddenly of all of the young Jedi who had gone missing in the last five years. Perhaps not all of them had joined the Force, after all. Perhaps some of them were here. She shivered with a coldness that didn't come from the air. This moon was a Dark place, she was sure of it.

It was surely the will of the Force that she come here, that she help these people. If so, there must be something here for her to find. Bastila took a deep breath and headed toward the library. She had faith that the Force would help her escape, but it couldn't hurt to help it along.

* * *

_10/2/06 A/N: I'll be out of the country for a couple of weeks and unable to post, so there'll be a brief hiatus in this story until I get back. Depending on the queue time, look for the next chapter the third or fourth week of October. As always, thanks for your comments._


	11. Chapter 10

**TEN**

Pellek adjusted her rebreather mask for the twentieth time in the last hour. The air on Espol was thin and gray, with a nasty film of particulate hanging in the air. By the time the sunlight from the planet's ancient star trickled through the atmosphere, it was a watery, pale red that did nothing to illuminate the narrow walkway they were traversing.

Pellek had taken the rear of their three-man column; Dustil presumably knew where they were going and so had taken the front. The glow of his green lightsaber did little to improve the gloom of the planet. She glanced uneasily around her, feeling more than seeing the scattering of shadows around them. The shadows looked far too substantial to be simple tricks of the light. They were following a walkway at the bottom of a canyon that had probably held a river in its prehistory. The ground was littered with small dark stones that slid like ball bearings under her boots.

She'd never been on this planet, of course, but it felt familiar to her. It was the stillness in the air, like the weight of too many souls on her shoulders. Espol was all too reminiscent of Malachor.

She had met Revan on Malachor, just before the end. She had received word that Revan was in a tent on the Western Plains, dreaming up a brilliant strategy, no doubt. When Pellek walked in, the woman was looking thoughtfully at a holo of a spacemap floating in the air above her desk.

Revan looked up. She had cut her hair short by now, and the choppy pieces were shoved under her black cloak. She smiled and got to her feet. "Pel, I didn't think you ever left that starship of yours. How are you?"

Pellek stood stiffly through Revan's embrace, unexpectedly glad for the armor under her robes that dulled the contact. They had been at war for three years, but it felt longer. She had last spoken to Revan in person over a year ago. "I don't have much time," she said shortly.

Revan leaned back, the start of a frown on her face. She looked paler than usual, like she had spent too much time on starships, but Pellek knew Revan often went to the surface to talk to the troops. "Just business, then, General?" she asked. There was no malice in her voice, but something about the words made Pellek shiver. Revan gestured, and two chairs slid back from the holotable. "That's fine. Please, sit down, and tell me what brings you to this Force-forsaken camp. I assume you received my dispatch about Mandalore?"

Pellek sat, pulling her Jedi robes around her to deflect the chill of the unheated tent. Revan didn't seem to feel the cold. "I'm surprised Mandalore agreed to meet you in person," Pellek said. "Intel told us that Mandalore believed the Republic's leadership to be unworthy of his attention."

Revan smirked. "The Republic's leadership _is_ unworthy of his attention. I, however, am not. His losses have gone up since we joined the battle, and particularly this year, when the Senate finally gave me strategic control. In spite of a few, let's call them tactical blunders, we appear to be gaining the upper hand." She looked meaningfully at Pellek.

Pellek flushed and cursed her pale skin for the betrayal. She'd lost too many men, made too many bad decisions. But her soldiers kept following her, in spite of it. As if their loyalty was compelled. "And what will you discuss with Mandalore?" she asked.

"I intend to kill him." Revan laughed shortly at Pellek's expression. "In a fair fight, Pel, don't worry about that. Mandalore will fight me, and it will break the will of his people when he dies."

Pellek shifted, her armor scraping comfortingly across her shoulders. "It won't be enough," she said. "The Mandalorians will just disperse into the Outer Rim and stage guerilla attacks against our colonies. The Core Worlds will be protected, but we can't leave the Rim Worlds to die."

Revan's eyes narrowed. Pellek was reminded of the rumors in the ranks, that Revan was gathering an army loyal only to her, that she had Force powers that no one had ever seen before. "Well, of course not," Revan said. "But don't you see? The Mandalorians aren't the real threat. They're just a decoy, just something to keep our attention while the real enemy moves inward."

"What do you mean? What real enemy?" Pellek asked, frowning. Intel had never reported anything beyond the Mandalorian threat

"I don't know," Revan said, and Pellek knew she was lying. "I intend to find out, but I have to destroy Mandalore first. And you have to end this war."

Pellek's hands clenched on the holotable. "That's why I came. I can't carry out the plan. It's immoral."

"Immoral?" Revan repeated, eyebrows raised. "They're your plans, Pel. They weren't immoral when you drew them up, were they? When Malak asked you if you could do it, you didn't hesitate to say that you could." Her voice was cold.

Pellek shook her head. "There's a big difference between sitting at a holoboard and actually doing it. They're _my_ men down here—I can't ask them to sacrifice themselves for this, even if it will end the war."

Revan's aura was, as always, unreadable, but Pellek didn't need the Force to see the anger in the woman's eyes. Pellek promised herself that she would not back down this time. There had to be another way.

The moment stretched out too long, but then Revan smiled. "I'm glad you feel that way," she said. "This war has been hard on all of us, and I think you more than others. The way you bond with your soldiers must make it hard for you to lose them. Honestly, if you weren't worried about this plan, I might have to call Master Vrook to come check your Force alignment." Revan leaned her elbows on the table and pushed the dark cloak off her forehead. She sighed. "I'm not going to try to persuade you, Pel. You're in charge of the ground troops. You designed the plan, you found the tech to build the mass shadow generator. If you honestly think we can win this war without doing this, then I trust your decision."

Revan stared at her, and Pellek saw the girl she had grown up with, the one she had smoked a stolen cigarra with behind the Masters' chambers, the one who had never been afraid to sass the instructors, the one she had so admired in the classroom and on the sparring grounds. The one she had never been able to refuse.

Pellek stood and shook her robes into place. "I'll activate the mass shadow generator after I hear from you that Mandalore is dead. Force be with you, Revan."

"And with you, General Tran." Revan flipped her cloak back up, shadowing her eyes. "Force be with us all."

Trudging along the riverbed on Espol, Pellek shook her head clear of the past. Lately, her memories haunted her as much as her actual ghosts did. After Revan revealed herself as Lord of the Sith, Pellek had wondered if she should have seen the Darkness in Revan on Malachor. Surely it was there. Had she missed it, too consumed by her own fears to see what was in front of her? Or had she known, and simply chosen to ignore the signs? Even now, she wasn't sure.

Atton materialized in front of her, marching along behind Carth like he was part of their line. She lengthened her stride to catch up to him. "What's the word, Atton?" she asked.

He glanced at the jagged rocks comprising the sides of the canyon. He looked tired again, like he had on Vintar. "This is a bad place, Pel. We're nothing but marching targets down here."

Pellek nodded. They'd been walking for almost two days now, with just a tense few hours to catch a rest. Espol was nothing but mountain ranges and canyons, and even their speeder wouldn't fit in the narrow passage they were marching through. Dustil was supposedly leading them to a cave where he and Revan had camped the night before they'd been attacked. He'd plotted a course to the campsite as soon as he'd learned where they were landing, and he'd taken off almost before the ship had touched down.

The only conversation in the last six hours had been Dustil's short confirmations that yes, she was here, and yes, she was still alive. Pellek was glad for Atton's company. "Can you feel her?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I looked, but it's hard for me to get around here. Too Dark for me, I think." He grinned weakly. "Good thing I'm such a prickly bastard—I don't think Bao-Dur will even be able to appear."

Ahead of them, Carth slowed and turned around, pulling down his rebreather mask to ask, "Are you talking to one of your ghosts?"

"Atton, but he can't tell if Revan is here." Ahead of them, Dustil paused and waited for them to catch up.

"Tell him to scout ahead for us as far as he can in half-klick intervals and report back to you if there's any trouble ahead." Carth eyed the rockwalls towering over them. "I have a bad feeling about this place."

"Nice of you to ask, Admiral," Atton groused. "Funny, I seem to remember deserting the Fleet about fifteen years ago."

Pellek was too tired to be amused by Atton's banter. "Just do it, okay?" she said.

Atton saluted lazily. "I'll be your tool anytime, babe." He blinked out.

Pellek waved a hand at Dustil to continue, and they started marching again. The canyon was too narrow for two of them to walk comfortably side-by-side, so Carth walked just ahead and talked over his shoulder. "You've been pretty quiet back there," he started.

She shrugged. "We've all been quiet. If this place bothers you, imagine how Dustil and I feel."

She couldn't see his face. "Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that," he said. He lowered his voice. "Do you think she's here at all?"

Pellek raised her eyebrows. She knew Carth and Dustil had seen some kind of photo of Revan on Vintar, but she'd never really believed that Revan was there. It was too much of a coincidence. She hadn't had a Force connection with Revan for a long time, but the slippery unease she felt on this planet had all of the markings of the woman. "You think Dustil might be mistaken?" she asked as neutrally as possible.

"Or worse," he replied quietly. "You're the one with the Force—what do you see?"

Pellek realized with a shock that Carth thought his son had fallen to the Dark side. So he wasn't entirely blind, after all. But it was one thing for him to suspect it; it was another thing entirely for her to tell a Fleet Admiral that she thought his son was a Sith. "I can feel something of her here," she said truthfully, "but I can't tell if she's still here."

Atton blinked back in well ahead of Carth. He ran toward her, passing through Carth without stopping, and fruitlessly tried to grab her arm. "There must be fifty of them up there," he panted, pointing ahead of them. "Less than a klick—right after the riverbed turns behind the rockface."

"Dustil!" she called ahead. She waved him in and waited while he jogged back to them. She quickly relayed the information to them.

Dustil frowned. "But I don't sense anything ahead of us—are you sure?"

Atton looked like he would have grabbed Dustil by the collar if he could. "Yeah, I'm damn sure I didn't just hallucinate fifty black cloaks who are obviously _looking for us_. Sure is funny that a powerful Jedi like you didn't notice them, isn't it? I'd call it pretty damn unbelievable, in fact."

Dustil lunged toward Atton. "Why don't you just come out and say it, you worthless piece of Force filament. Come on, accuse me of being a Sith!"

Carth yanked Dustil back by his shoulder. "Cool it!" he ordered. Dustil shrugged off his father's hand but didn't protest. Carth pointed out a couple of crevasses in the left rockwall. "We'll take cover there, and we'll be able to see them as they come around the curve. From what you've told us about them, Dustil, we'll have to find a way to engage them that doesn't require a direct confrontation. Can one of you stop the group in a Stasis field?"

Pellek smiled grimly as they started up the rockface. Clearly, Carth was used to fighting with Jedi. "I might be able to hold some of them, but I don't think I can get them all," she said. "Fifty resisting enemies is a hell of a bucking ronto."

Dustil shook his head. "I can't do Stasis at all. If Pellek can hold them, I can fry them, but I can't keep them in place." He hauled himself over the lip of the ledge and reached his hand down to help her up.

Pellek could feel Atton's gaze on her as she got to her feet. She looked over to see him watching her thoughtfully. "You know what you could do," he began.

"Don't start with me," she interrupted. "That's dangerous as hell. You know how hard it is to stop it once I start."

"What?" Dustil asked. "What can you do?" Carth, who was watching the curve though the binocs, glanced up expectantly.

Pellek sighed. "It'll take too long to explain. But the bottom line is that I can connect to another Force user and use the Force through them. Have to, actually. So I could use your superior Force powers and my ability to Stasis and—"

"Freeze everyone," Dustil finished. "Great idea. Let's do it."

"No, it's not that easy!" she snapped. "I have this—this hole inside of me, and I don't know how to break the connection. Once I start taking the Force from you, I don't know if I'll be able to stop." She could hear Master Vrook's cold words in her head. _You can feel the Force, but you cannot feel yourself_, he'd said. She was dangerous.

Carth shook his head. "No, no way. We'll find another solution." Even as he spoke, they could see dust coming around the corner.

"There is no other solution!" Dustil said. He ducked down behind the crevasse wall and pulled Pellek down next to him. Pellek could feel the Sith searching for them, their probes leaving oily black tendrils through the Force. He looked her straight in the eyes, and she saw Revan in his fierce gaze. "Do it."

She took Dustil's forearm and felt for him in the Force. He was like a burning tree, fierce and blue at the core, gray and then red-tinged on the outside, and teeming with power. She reached for him, and smiled as his power surged into her. She hadn't realized how little she had felt the Force since her crew left her—connected to Dustil, she could hear the tiny sounds of life on the planet, feel Carth's heart beating, see Atton's glimmering presence beside her. He was incredibly powerful, far more than any of her crew had been. The Force felt so good—

"Hey, back up a little, huh?" Dustil asked shakily. Pellek opened her eyes to see him looking at her with wide eyes. Over Dustil's shoulder, Pellek could see Carth watching them with a scowl of disgust on his face.

Atton leaned over her shoulder and breathed into her ear, "If it was a Force orgasm you wanted, babe, I would have been happy to serve."

Pellek flushed. "Right," she coughed. "I think we can do it." She tugged on her robes and looked firmly at the approaching cloud.

Carth turned back to the canyon and raised his hand behind him. "On my mark. . .mark!"

Pellek pulled on the Force through the connection with Dustil, gasping again at the sheer _amount_ of it, and flung her palm toward the Dark mass. Dustil grunted. She could see the Stasis field soaring toward the Sith through the Force, like a pink net flying through the air. The Sith saw it coming, and an orange field met hers, but she yanked again on the Force and barreled through.

She opened her eyes, panting and sweating, to see fifty cloaked figures frozen in the canyon.

Dustil was panting next to her. He raised a hand toward the mass. "Nothing left to do but fry them—"

"No," Carth interrupted. "Not you. I'll do it." Before Dustil could react, he flung two grenades into the canyon and ducked down. The blast whistled over their heads.

Pellek felt all fifty Sith join the Force at once, like a second shockwave from the grenades. Her Stasis field crumbled into filaments. Dustil clapped her on the shoulder. "Nice work." He pointedly disengaged her hand from his arm. "But do you mind letting go now?"

She concentrated on the flow of the Force from Dustil. As she had expected, she couldn't break the connection, but she reached through the Force and erected a heavy block against him. The dizzying sensation of power slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether. The connection was still there, but she had dammed the tide. The hole inside her where the Force used to live pulsed angrily. Oh, how she wanted more.

"That's my girl," Atton whispered in her ear. "Give the boy back his Force powers and let's get the frack off this cliff."

Carth put down the binocs. "The riverbed is clear around the curve for at least two klicks. If you two are ready—"

Dustil grinned and swung over the ledge. "Let's go find Case."

* * *

Bastila stared blearily at the computer screen, realizing that she had just read the same paragraph five times. It appeared that she was at another dead end. She stood and stretched, feeling as always the metal band around her neck. She rubbed underneath it where it chafed her skin and wished again for Force Heal. 

It had been two weeks now since she had given herself up to the Vintari—she kept track on a datapad, one of the few items she was allowed to keep in her sleeping quarters. It would be far too easy to lose track of the days here, and she was afraid of what would happen if she did. She was afraid she would look up one day and realize she had been here for two years. If she even survived that long.

Already, the fifteen or so sentients in her "group" had been reduced by one. The sentient, a Zabrak, went to sleep in her small quarters and never woke back up. Gellan told her that the Zabrak was the only sentient left who was already in the hospital when he arrived. He was now the sentient who had been there the longest. Sentients only lasted a year or two, it seemed, before the constant taking of the Force by the Vintari overwhelmed them.

The door to the library slid open and Gellan entered. From the haggard look on his face, it was clear that he had just come from a session with the cube. He barely nodded in greeting before dropping into a chair near the door. "How goes your research, Master Jedi?" he asked, seemingly nonchalant, but Bastila could hear the exhaustion in his voice.

Bastila frowned. "Perhaps I should assist you to your quarters, Gellan. You should rest." They had taken him almost every day in the last week, and it seemed harder for him to bounce back each time.

Gellan shook his head, wrapping his arms around his chest. His eyes were heavily shadowed, light hair falling limply onto his forehead. "They've almost used me up, I think," he said quietly. "I don't know how many more sessions I can take." He smiled wanly at her. "I'd rather die here than alone in my quarters."

"There is no death, there is the Force," Bastila said automatically. She flushed, realizing that she had implicitly acknowledged the possibility that he would not survive much longer. "I mean, you should concentrate on getting your strength back."

Gellan inclined his head wryly. "I'll defer to your wisdom on the matter." He closed his eyes and settled back in the chair. "So, tell me, Master Jedi, what are you working on today? Still trying to learn Vintari?"

Bastila had declared to anyone who would hear her that she intended to learn the Vintari's language. It provided a convenient cover to her search of the archives on the library computer. As she expected, the computer was heavily censored, and there was certainly no way to get a message out, but she had relatively open access to the moon's records. It was a slow process, but she was starting to notice some patterns. Startol and Tepai were mentioned quite a bit. It seemed that their mating had been an unexpected match between the "priest-class," which she understood to mean the Force users, and the "darjuki" or hereditary leaders. They disappeared from the records, though, when the "Jedi" returned to enslave the people of Vintar, reappearing only in the accounts of the Children's Massacre. Bastila had spent the last three days scouring the archives for some hint of where they had gone in between, but had come up with nothing.

"Learning Vintari is taking longer than I expected," Bastila said. It wasn't entirely a lie—the written language of the moon didn't appear to derive from Basic, and the angular glyphs were very difficult to decipher.

Gellan was quiet for several moments, and Bastila thought he had fallen asleep. "Did the Jedi send you here or did you come on your own?" he asked abruptly.

The question caught Bastila off guard. So far, Gellan had expressed no interest in her work with the Jedi. She instinctively sought the intent of Gellan's question through the Force, and was rewarded by a shock from her collar. She gasped, her vision whiting out for a second. "Why do you ask?" she managed, trying to compose herself. She had such difficulty not using the Force.

Gellan politely looked away while she got her breath back. "I would expect the Jedi to take an interest in a place like this. You're the first Jedi I've met here."

Bastila considered Gellan. Throughout the two weeks she had been on Vintar, he had maintained a courteous reserve from her, unfailingly addressing her as "Master Jedi." Unlike most of the other sentients in their group, however, Gellan spent time in the library between sessions with the cube, and gradually Bastila had gotten to know him. Upon her request, he had told her that his family had refused the Jedi's request to test him as a child because he was the oldest son and would inherit the farm. He had not yet married when he was captured, though he would have been expected to do so within another year or two. From the way he spoke about the Force, Bastila could tell he had some rudimentary training, possibly self-taught, but she couldn't tell how strong a Force-user he was. Though he answered her inquiries freely, he never asked anything of her or her background. She couldn't be sure without the Force, but she thought he could trust him. And Force knew, she needed help from somewhere.

"I have been reading about Vintari history after they defeated the Sith, but there appear to be gaps in their archives," she said. "The gaps make it difficult to understand the darjuki council's decisions."

"Decisions like taking the Force from sentients?" Gellan asked quietly. His eyes were closed again. She noticed that, true to form, he didn't press her for an answer to his question about the Jedi.

"Among other things," she replied. "I want to understand why they're doing this to us, to Force-users. It cannot be simply that they are afraid of the Force. Something changed after the Sith were defeated, and I believe that may be the key to what is happening here."

"Did you look for the secretary's notes?" he asked.

"The what?" Bastila asked. "I have already examined all of the minutes from the darjuki council meetings—they do not reveal anything."

Gellan opened his eyes and leaned forward. "Not the minutes—there's never anything in those. But someone has to take down those minutes, and the secretary on any council always takes more notes than he publishes in the official record. I'm sure it's the same here--see if you can find the draft papers."

"How do you know this? I thought you said you were a farmer on Deralia," she asked.

He hesitated for just an instant. "Trade council," he said, as though that explained everything. He gestured toward the computer. "Go on, try to find it."

Bastila gave him a long look before turning back to the computer and digging through several submenus of information. The official scribe of the darjuki council at the time the Children's Massacre was a Vintari named Horpanoi. She found his obituary a few years later:

_Gods be praised: Horpanoi, honored scribe of the darjuki council for the last ten years, has become one with the gods after a long sickness. Prior to his passing, he served as an honored member of the College of Scribes both before and after the Enslavement. His mate, Ballne, will join him with the gods at the sunrise ceremony next holiday._

Bastila pulled up the records of the College of the Scribes and found, at the bottom of a fourth-tier submenu, "_Personal papers of the scribes._" She opened the folder and found a collection for Horpanoi. Sure enough, inside the collection was a reproduction of pages and pages of handwritten notes, written in a miniscule hand on unlined paper. "Force guide me," Bastila whispered, and quickly scanned the pages, trying to make out something from the dense Vintari writing.

Something caught her eye, so small that she almost missed it. It was a word that apparently had no Vintari translation, as it was written in Basic. She brought a hand to her mouth.

Gellan was now leaning across the table. "What did you find?" he asked.

She looked up. "Holocron," she whispered. Whatever the purpose of the cube and the Force-stealing, it came from the Sith. She felt a surge of triumph—she knew there was a reason she had been led here, and this had to be it. She just needed time to decipher the notes—

The library door opened before she could explain her findings to Gellan. She quickly blanked the computer and stood. "Yes?" she asked the uniformed Vintari in the door.

It consulted a datapad and cocked its head. "Bastila Shan, please accompany me for your session," it said in accented Basic.

Bastila's stomach clenched in dread and she felt suddenly like a youngling. "But you took me yesterday," she protested, hearing the tremble in her voice.

Gellan moved in front of her. "She hasn't had time to recover yet," he said. "Leave her be another day."

The guard's head fur darkened. "It is time for her session," it repeated, and walked around Gellan to take Bastila by the arm. Gellan reached for the Vintari before Bastila could stop him. The Vintari hit a button on the datapad and Gellan staggered back, hands around the collar. A grunt escaped between his clenched teeth. The Vintari pushed Bastila roughly toward the door and Gellan moved again to intercept. This time, the shock sent him to his knees.

"Stop it!" Bastila cried. She went out the door, hands raised in surrender. "I'll come with you, please, stop hurting him." No sentient should be sacrificing himself for her.

The guard marched her through now-familiar hallways to the session room. She entered with a sigh and seated herself at the table, trying not to think of Gellan but hoping all the same that they would not punish him further for trying to help her. She sternly reminded herself to show some dignity. They had not broken her yet.

The door slid open and Tepai entered with another Vintari. Bastila's eyes widened. "Follani!" she exclaimed.

The child was dressed in the same white as Tepai and had an eerie look of serenity of her face. Her head fur had been stained with some kind of pink dye. She sat at the table, feet dangling from the chair, and folded her hands. "Greetings, Bastila Shan," she said in clear Basic.

Tepai took the seat next to the child. "Follani is learning how to use her gifts. She will be assisting me today."

Bastila swallowed the disgust in her throat. "But she's just a child!" she said. "How can you use her in this—this abomination?"

Follani's serene smile faded for a second, but then she fixed it back in place. "Concentrate on the cube, please," she asked.

As she always did, Bastila contemplated resistance, but all that would get her was a shocking from the collar. She reluctantly fixed her attention on the cube, and tried to remember that she was getting close to finding answers. She just needed more time in the archive. She was close, was close, was close—

An hour later, barely able to see through the weariness that seemed to come from her very soul, she stumbled back into the holding area. It took a long time to get to the library. She pressed her palm against the door release and entered the room.

She blinked and stared around. The room was empty.

"They took the computers after you left," Gellan said quietly from the doorway.

Bastila whirled to face him. "But—but I was close to understanding. I—needed the library. How will I—" her knees went suddenly weak but she locked them stiffly and refused to fall.

Gellan approached her and put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. "I couldn't stop them, Bastila," he said. "I'm sorry."

A sob bubbled up in her chest and she found herself crying against Gellan's chest as he whispered comforting things to her. Bastila barely heard him. All she could see was the empty room and her last hope disappearing with the computer.

The Force had forsaken her.


	12. Chapter 11

**ELEVEN**

The afternoon sun slanted deeply across the glassy water of Tuma Lake, reflecting yellow and orange sparkles onto the shore. Two haln birds, their purple tails like streaks of shadow, dove toward the lake and came up with wriggling fish in their beaks. A breeze blew across the gathered sentients, ruffling fur and clothing and carrying the scent of hifa to the crowd.

Mission smiled and shook a Bothan's hand. "Senator Kamalla, it's been a pleasure. I hope the committee enjoyed this visit to the reconstructed area. We hope to have several more areas repaired in the next year."

The Senator nodded to her gravely. "The pleasure is all mine, I assure you," he said. "The Reconstruction Project has come a remarkable way in only five years. I hoped, but I never truly believed that we would ever again stand on the surface of Telos without containment suits. Your work here has been commendable."

"Not my work, Senator," she quickly protested, smile still across her face. "This has all been the Ithorians' doing. Without the work of Chodo Habat and his herd, none of this would have been possible. I just try to help everyone talk to each other."

"Of course, of course," the Senator backtracked. "The Republic truly owes a debt to the Ithorian people." He looked out toward the lake contemplatively.

"Okay, that's a wrap," a voice called.

The Senator immediately turned away from a lake and toward a harried aide with a handful of datapads. "What's next on the agenda?" he asked.

The aide started to guide the Senator toward the transport ship. "We have a fundraiser on Deralia for its senator's reelection campaign, and then the Trade Council wants to discuss pirating in their sector. After that, if there's time, we promised that medical station that you would check in on the children's wing." He glanced anxiously at his chrono and walked faster. "Then tomorrow, we have. . ." his voice faded as he walked the Senator out of Mission's earshot.

Kaxtrax sidled up to Mission. "Does he care only for what the holonet will show?" the Ithorian grumbled.

Mission laughed as she watched the press gathering up its equipment and Senators being hustled to the transport. None of them even noticed how resistant the grass below their feet was to being trampled. She shook her head. "Nope, but who cares? We got the funding we wanted for the rest of the year. And next year is an election year, so they'll look like jerks if they deny the funding then. Senator Kamalla can have all the interviews he wants, as far as I'm concerned."

Kaxtrax nodded her head. "You understand the political herds better than I. But onto happier topics. Chodo Habat asked me to invite you and your herdlings for the evening meal, to celebrate."

"That sounds great," Mission said, "but first I have to check something out nearby." She walked with Kaxtrax toward her speeder. She had arranged to transport to the surface separately for this reason.

"A disturbance?" Kaxtrax asked. "Is it the same one you have been tracking on the satellite?"

Mission nodded, pulling on a containment suit after she was sure the press had all gotten on the transport. She climbed into the speeder. "Yeah, I keep getting readings like someone is moving around up there, but the satellites haven't shown anything on visual. I think one of the sensors must be malfunctioning or something."

"Are you sure you should travel alone?" Kaxtrax swung her head in a worried fashion.

"Yeah, I'll be fine. It's just a blitzed sensor, after all. I'll see you tonight." Mission pulled down the cockpit cover and accelerated out toward the polar region. With one hand, she fumbled around behind her and pulled out a blaster from the rack. She made sure the safety was on but kept it close at hand. She expected no problems, but it never hurt to be safe.

A couple of hours later, she carefully set the speeder down on a flat patch of ice near one of the old irrigation silos. Snow had fallen recently and made walking on the ice easier. Mission flipped down the sunshade on her helmet to reduce the white glare of the sun. She approached the irrigation silo warily, flashlight in one hand, blaster in the other.

She circled the silo, looking for any signs of entry. This was where the anomalous readings originated, but she didn't see any indication that anyone had been here lately. Of course, she reminded herself, the new snow would have covered any tracks in the slushy ice near the silo. Blaster up, she tugged on the door to the silo. The door made a report like a blaster rifle and she jumped.

"Chill, Mission," she muttered to herself. A small voice inside of her asked what the hell she was doing out here in the polar regions by herself while her husband was on away duty and her children were at home with their play group. What if she died?

She pushed those thoughts away, promising herself she would finish quickly, and shined her flashlight into the dark silo. It was about ten meters in diameter, and she could see the outlines of equipment and old computer systems in the dark. "Hello?" she called. Her voice echoed back to her. "Anyone in here?" She fumbled around the doorway and found the lighting panel. The room lit up, and Mission gasped.

"What the hell?" she whispered. In the center of the room was some kind of holoprojector, and around the perimeter of the room were half a dozen red pyramids. She knew what they were only because she had seen pictures of the secret Academy on Telos that the Exile had destroyed last year. They were Sith holocrons.

With a loud crack that made Mission jump again, the holoprojector abruptly lit up. A blue hologram appeared, jumpy with static. Mission quickly shut off her light and backed up toward the door. She glanced around outside the silo but saw no one coming. Perhaps this was some kind of automated message. She looked back at the holo. It showed some kind of sentient she'd never before encountered, speaking in a language she couldn't understand. The alien didn't appear to be able to see her on this end. Mission held her breath and walked back into the room toward the holotable. She linked her datapad and downloaded the source of the signal—somewhere in the Unknown Regions.

The static made it difficult to tell what the alien was doing, but it appeared to be typing something in on its end. A ball of white light began collecting in the center of the holotable, spinning like it was a ball of string gathering mass. It grew until it was about half a meter across, then it exploded outward.

Mission yelped and ducked down as the light shot over her head. Looking up awkwardly from her crouch, she could see that it had split into six strands and connected to the holocrons around the room. When the light touched the holocrons, they jumped to life, hissing something ugly into the tiny room. The sound echoed off of the walls of the silo until the whole room vibrated. Mission's datapad started up an alarm—clearly, this was what had been setting off her motion detectors. But what the hell was it? The noise grew, and the light continued to pour into the holocrons until Mission almost couldn't stand to listen to it, and then it suddenly stopped. The figure in the hologram bowed respectfully and then cut the connection.

The sudden silence was almost as terrifying as the noise had been. Mission crouched for another few moments, unsure of what to do. Then the fear reached her brain and she ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She jumped into her speeder and pressed the throttle down as far as it would go. Her only thought for some time was to put as much distance between her and that awful place as possible.

After she calmed down, and when it was clear that no one was following her, Mission sent a signal back to the polar perimeter that would record the passage of every creature larger than a haln bird. If she was right, and those holocrons were collecting something, it stood to reason that someone would eventually come by to pick it up. She had seen enough Sith work in her life to know that something Dark was going on, and she wasn't remotely qualified to handle it.

But now what? She couldn't very well tell the Ithorians about this—they were a great species, but superstitious, and she was worried they might refuse to continue work on the planet if they thought something Dark was contaminating it. Three years ago, she would have contacted Jolee, but the Jedi Massacre had made that impossible. If she told the Fleet, word would get back to the Senate and put her funding in jeopardy.

She finally pulled up her comm and sent a recorded message to the only person she could think of who would help her discreetly. "Carth, I hope you get this message, because you're not gonna believe what's going on here."

* * *

Dustil couldn't tell if the hissing was real or just in his head. He couldn't quite hear it, but he could feel it like a dull ache at the base of his skull. If he hummed to himself, he could almost drown it out, but the humming didn't help the crawling anxiety that he could feel through the Bond with Case. He had the terrible sense, growing more powerful by the second, that they were almost too late. 

"Dustil?"

"Huh?" he asked, turning around to see his father looking at him with raised eyebrows. Pellek clambered over the lip of the canyon and stood behind Carth, catching her breath. Dustil thought she was smirking in spite of the sweat matting her hair to her face.

"Are you all right?" Carth asked. "Do you know which way to go?"

Dustil realized he had been standing still at the top of the canyon for some time. The mountain range leveled out for a short distance, with two narrow paths gradually inclining toward a series of caves. His first thought was that his father and Pellek must think he was sleeping on his feet. But then he saw the flicker of suspicion on his father's face. The same damn suspicion he'd been seeing since Vintar. "I told you an hour ago that we were close," Dustil snapped, "and we're still close. I'll tell you when we get there." He turned around and chose the right fork.

The static in his head was loud. _We're coming, Case_, he thought grimly, and the static seemed to dim.

They walked for the better part of the morning, not that Dustil could tell from the sun what time of day it was. The curves of the rocky path were starting to look familiar to him. It was all foggy, like he'd been here in a dream, but he knew that wasn't right. He couldn't remember walking through here with Case, but he could vaguely recall running back through here with a Sith chasing him. He saw a cave entrance with remains of a fire inside and wondered if he had stopped there. Why would he have stopped if he was being chased?

The light changed, and Dustil noticed something on the wall ahead of him, something dark against the gray rock. He squinted at it and realized it was half a handprint in blood. Dustil's breath caught and he looked instinctively at his own hand. He had a flash of himself stumbling away from the wall, hand on his wounded leg to stop the blood. He had been here. They were close.

They reached the top of the path. The incline flattened out into a circular crater, heavily shadowed by the next mountain range. The dark overhang above the open space had the effect of making Dustil feel simultaneously exposed and oppressed. The wind whipped strangely through the crater, kicking up mini-tornadoes of dust and battering the scrub brush around the perimeter.

And the Darkness was nearly overwhelming. Pellek actually coughed and stepped backward toward the incline. "What is this place?" she gasped.

Dustil barely heard her, his attention taken up entirely by the pull of Case's aura through the Bond. She was here, somewhere. He was sure of it. There was something odd about the feeling, though, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. . .Dustil shook his head, trying to clear it. He just had to find her, that was all. She had to be in one of the caves circling the interior wall of the crater.

"What are we expecting up there?" Carth asked. "Pellek, can Atton scout for us?"

Dustil looked at Atton for the first time in several hours, and was surprised at what he saw. The ghost was barely there, flickering in and out like a long distance hologram. "No good, Admiral," Atton wheezed, voice echoing as if from a long distance. "Too Dark here—can't stay—"

"Atton?" Pellek asked. She reached toward him. "Will you—will you be okay?"

Atton placed his palm next to her outstretched hand. "I think so, but not here. Sorry, babe. Thought I could do it, but I can't hang on—He faded out.

Pellek made a choking sound and turned quickly away. Carth glanced sidelong at Dustil, clearly looking for an explanation, but Dustil shook his head. Carth's eyes narrowed but he didn't push the issue.

Pellek ran her hands through her hair and took a deep breath. Still facing out toward the path, she asked loudly, "Is this the only way out of here?"

_You're wasting time_! Dustil thought. He knew in his head that Pellek was voicing a legitimate concern that they would be trapped in the bowl with their exit route blocked, but he still felt a spike of anger at the delay. _You're being irrational_, he told himself firmly, but the anger fed his connection to the Force and it was hard to pull away from the heady feeling of power. "Yeah," he said finally. "Someone should stay here and guard the entrance while the other two hit the caves."

"I'll do it," Carth volunteered. "It might take both of you to get Case out."

Pellek shook her head. "No offense, Admiral, but you don't stand a chance against a group of Sith. They'd have you in Stasis before you could shoot. You should go with Dustil and keep back for cover fire. I'll guard the entrance."

Carth's jaw clenched, but he nodded. "You're right," he admitted. He squared his shoulders and checked his blasters. "Are you ready?" he asked Dustil.

Dustil nodded, glancing anxiously toward the caverns. "This way," he said, and started toward the cliff wall. He could feel the pull of his Bond with Case, but something in the feel of the Force was off. It was like she was just ahead of him, but also far away. That, of course, made no sense at all. Maybe it was just the Dark fuzz of the planet that was making it hard to see clearly though the Force. He hoped that was what it was.

Dustil followed the thread of the Bond toward a wide cavern near the back of the bowl. He turned back to his father, who had both blasters drawn. "This is it," Dustil said.

Carth looked warily into the cavern. "Why isn't anyone guarding the entrance? Something about this doesn't feel right."

Dustil agreed, but he couldn't articulate why. Nor could he explain to his Force-blind father why he had to go into the cave even knowing that there was something wrong. She was his Master, connected to him through the Force in a very real way. They had spent the better part of the last five years practically inside each other's heads. When it came down to it, he didn't really have a choice—his choice was made five years ago on Telos when he created their Bond.

He opened his mouth to explain, but his father spoke first. "It doesn't matter, does it?" Carth asked with a grin. "We're both going in there."

Dustil looked at his father in surprise, then grinned back. "Yeah. Let's do it." He projected a shield around them both, ignited his lightsaber, and walked determinedly into the dark cave. Carth followed a couple of meters back, fingers on blaster triggers.

The glow of his lightsaber cast wavering shadows on the walls of the cave. The rasp of his breath echoed strangely around him. It was too quiet. He stretched his Force senses to their limit, and he was positive, as positive as he had been about anything, that the thread to Case ended here. She was here, just ahead—

Then, abruptly, the cave ended. On the ground, leaning casually against the wall, was Case's lightsaber. Case herself was nowhere to be found.

Dustil stared, anger flaring up in his head. "No," he whispered, staring at the discarded saber.

"Dustil," his father started.

"No!" Dustil shouted. He spun around, blade before him. "She was here!"

The hissing in his head rose to an unbearable volume, drowning out everything else. A shadow slid across the front of the cave, blocking the dim light. Dustil could barely make out the shape of the figure, but he knew that it was the same figure who had taken Case. The figure was flanked by several smaller ones, more of the Sith they had faced in the canyon.

"Where is she?" Dustil shouted. Beside him, Carth fired off a quick round of blaster shots, taking down three of the Sith before a shield snapped up around the group. His next round of shots were deflected away. None of them came close to the central figure. "Where is she?" Dustil shouted again.

The creature shrieked wordlessly in response. Through the Force, Dustil could infer the meaning of the scream. _Too late_, it said.

"No!" Dustil shouted. He concentrated on the Force, pulling it around him like a cloak. He could feel the emptiness around the Sith, where it was taking in the Force without returning the favor. Farther away, less severely, Dustil could feel Pellek doing the same thing. He gathered the Force inside of him and flung it toward the Sith in a burst of white lightning. The smaller Sith fried instantly, falling to the ground as dust as they joined the Force. Before Dustil could act, the central figure snatched their energy and pulled it in to strengthen itself.

The creature screamed. _Join us._

Dustil leapt high in the air, lightsaber above his head, and brought it down over the Sith. His blade crashed into the shield around the creature and he felt it give a little before he was knocked backward. Dustil caught himself in the air and dropped lightly to the ground. He grinned hard at the Sith and sent another burst of Lightning toward it. The hissing in his head dropped out a little bit. He had hurt it.

"Where is she?" Dustil asked again, Persuasion strong in his voice.

"Dustil, what are you doing?" Carth asked behind him. Dustil spared him a quick look and saw his father looking at him with suspicion and confusion all over his face. Carth didn't even glance at the Sith still looming at the end of the cavern. Dustil realized that Carth must not be able to see it. As if the Dark creature existed only in the Force.

_Shall I kill him, Jedi?_ the Sith asked. Dustil glanced at the Sith and then back to his father. Carth was now walking toward Dustil, blasters in their holsters. As far as Carth could see, all of the enemies had been defeated. The hissing in Dustil's head kicked back up.

"Father, get back!" Dustil said. As he spoke, the Sith sent a wave of energy toward Carth that flung him back against the cave. "No!" Dustil cried and yanked desperately at the Force. He managed to pull the impact back from killing speed. Even so, his father hit the back wall with a crack of armor and dropped senselessly to the ground.

Anger surged through Dustil's chest and this time he hung onto it, following the emotion to a well of Force power. "You've messed with the wrong Jedi, Sith," he growled. Tugging hard on the Force, he flung a blast of Lightning and Whirlwind toward the Sith. While the creature was busy deflecting the Force attack, Dustil threw his lightsaber like a javelin toward it. It struck the Sith and then. . .passed through.

The Sith laughed loudly over the hissing. Before Dustil could move, a blast of Lightning broke through his shields and hit him in the chest. Dustil fell backward, scream sucked away into hot air. As he tried to force his himself to his feet, he felt the Sith towering over him. Another blast of lightning. _My masters have her now,_ the creature said through the Force.

Dustil could barely raise his head. Pain coursed from his eyes to his toes. But in the fog of his brain, he realized what the Sith had said. _There was another Sith more powerful than it_. Dustil swallowed. He raised his hand, ignoring the pain in his arm, and Pushed the Sith backward. It wasn't far, but it was enough for him to flip himself to his feet. "Where are your masters?" Dustil asked. He blocked a Force Choke and countered with a burst of Lightning. The Sith backed up a few steps. Dustil felt the creature's fear, and pulled it into himself. He would beat this Sith here and now. Dustil called his lightsaber to his hand and held it menacingly before him.

The Sith shrieked again. _She was weak when she left_, it said. _My masters will break her._ Though the Force, it sent a burst of images into Dustil's head. Case, exhausted from blocking attack after attack, stumbling. Lightning pouring into her. Blood. Anger coursed into Dustil again, and he slashed hard across the Sith. It screamed, the hissing echoing through Dustil's head. Dustil flinched at the sound, and the Sith took the opportunity to flee. _You will both join us,_ it sent as it left.

"No!" Dustil shouted. He had to stop it, had to _make it_ tell him where Case was. He flung a wide Whirlwind toward the Sith.

"Dustil!" he heard behind him from his father. "What are you doing?" There was anger in his voice now. No doubt Carth thought Dustil had been the one who tossed him back into the wall. Dustil felt Carth's hand on his shoulder, holding him back.

Dustil pushed Carth backward, the anger he had held to attack the Sith still blinding him. He raced to the mouth of the cave and flung a bolt of Lightning toward the escaping Sith. Just as he let the bolt go, he saw Pellek getting to her feet, still weaving from the Whirlwind attack. She must have been coming up the path when he sent it. It was too late to stop the blast and the Lightning struck her in her upraised arms. She screamed and went down.

"Gods forgive me," Dustil heard behind him. He turned just in time to see Carth pull the blaster trigger before the bolt hit Dustil squarely in the chest.

Everything went black.

* * *

Pellek rolled onto her back, cursing the Onasi brat and his father and everyone else who came to mind. Her forearms burned where the Lightning had impacted and her body ached where it had coursed through. She had been guarding the crater entrance when she felt a strong disturbance in the Force and abandoned her post to help. She had just reached the cave when she was hit by Dustil's attacks. 

Pellek called on the Force and sent some Heal to her arms. She couldn't do anything about the scorched armor, but at least the pain eased. She shoved herself to her feet and approached the cave cautiously, lightsaber extended. Inside the cave, Carth was crouched over the prone form of his son. "Is he—?" she asked.

Carth shook his head without looking up. "He's just stunned. I shot him." He looked at the blaster in his hand before reholstering it. "His eyes were yellow. After we—after Case wasn't here, he was so angry. He was yelling, fighting something that wasn't there. And then he attacked you—I had to stop him."

Pellek felt for Dustil's aura and didn't find anything out of the ordinary. "Something that wasn't there," she murmured. She remembered seeing something flash past her as she ran up, something on the edge of her vision, but which spiked her Force senses as something very Dark. "I don't know, Carth, he might _have_ seen something in the Force. . .I'm sure he didn't mean to attack me."

Carth finally looked up at her. "Give me the collar," he said.

"The—are you sure?" she asked, surprised. "He ought to be reasonable when he wakes up—"

"And if he's not?" Carth challenged her. "Can you stop him? Because I sure as hell can't."

Pellek considered his words. He was right, she knew. She had been lucky to defeat Dustil on Dxun, and she was sure it was only by surprise that Carth had managed to shoot Dustil here. If he awoke out of control, there was no telling what he would do. She nodded and handed Carth the neural collar from her pack. Carth carefully fitted it around Dustil's neck and locked it shut. The collar gave off a nasty hum that plucked at her Force senses. Pellek looked away from the kneeling Admiral and his son toward the back of the cave.

It looked like someone had been here, perhaps several weeks ago. There were remains of a fire pit, an empty canteen, and a discarded datapad. A lightsaber leaned against the wall. Pellek picked it up and extended the yellow blade away from her. It seemed to be in good condition. She could tell without looking at the inscribed name on the hilt that it was Revan's. A Jedi's lightsaber was intensely personal, and it gave off an aura almost as strongly as the Jedi herself. This saber had Revan's blue-gray aura, her force of personality. She had been here, of that there was no doubt. The question was where she was now and why had she left her saber behind. Had she joined the Force?

Carth approached her. She extinguished the blade and handed it to him. "It's hers," she said.

Carth nodded, almost absentmindedly, and placed it in his own pack. He picked up the datapad and turned it on. "There's something on here," he said as he scrolled through the memory, "but the display is damaged. I might be able to read it on the _Hawk_." He looked over at Dustil, who was starting to come to. "It's a long walk back. We should get started." She thought Carth's self-control must be stretched taut, like a lyre string about to break. After all of this, for Revan to still be missing, for Dustil to be acting like a Sith, to be forced to fire upon his own son—it was a lot for a man to bear. She thought she should say something, show some sympathy, but Carth walked away before she could think of something to say, and the moment passed.

They got a barely-conscious Dustil to his feet and out of the cave. Pellek figured they could at least make it down to the canyon tonight, and hopefully be back to the _Hawk_ in three days. Carth shifted Dustil's weight to her. "Go on ahead. I'll catch up in a second."

Pellek rearranged Dustil's arm across her shoulder and made her way across the bowl. The crater still had a Dark feel to it, but it wasn't nearly as powerful as it had been when they arrived. She looked back to Carth, who was still at the mouth of the cavern. He pulled out a blaster and fired at the roof of the cave, over and over, until the rocks crumbled and blocked the entrance. Pellek could hear Carth's voice raised in a wordless cry as he fired. Only after the cavern entrance was reduced to a steaming pile of rubble did he holster his blaster and turn away. He walked back and took Dustil's weight back onto his own shoulder without meeting her eyes. "Let's go," he said, and started down the path.

Pellek followed silently. There was nothing she could say.


	13. Chapter 12

**TWELVE**

It took four days to get back to the _Hawk_, and Pellek had been on few worse marches. Dustil became increasingly difficult to manage as he tried to work himself out of the collar, so Pellek was forced to keep a heavy hand on him through the Force. Such expansive use of the Force left her without enough reserves to finish Healing her arms or do anything about the broken ribs she knew Carth was sporting. After the first night, she and Carth decided to use stims to keep going instead of stopping to rest, but that made them both jumpy and short-tempered, snapping at each other and hearing Sith that weren't there. A few did attack them, but they were surprisingly easy to defeat, going down with just a shot of Carth's blaster or a swing of her blade. Pellek had never been so glad to see the _Ebon Hawk_'s battered form.

Carth left her with Dustil and went to the cockpit to take them into orbit. Pellek sat across from Dustil in the main hold, back against the cold wall of the ship, and tried to fall asleep. She managed to get into a light doze, but the stims hadn't worn off enough to let her actually fall asleep. She found herself lost in a confusing maze of half-dreams, images real and imagined.

"Pellek," she heard. Pellek opened her eyes to see Carth standing over her.

"Time for my watch, Admiral?" she asked, hauling herself wearily to her feet.

Carth shook his head. "I used the last stim before we took off, so I won't be able to sleep for another eight hours. I need you to do something else." His gaze drifted to Dustil, who was leaning dejectedly against a bulkhead. The younger man's eyes were barely open. Every few seconds, he would jerk spasmodically, and Pellek would feel a surge of anger from him. It wouldn't take much longer for him to get out of the collar.

Pellek had the distinct sense she wouldn't like what Carth was going to ask her to do. "Yeah?" she asked warily.

Bao-Dur appeared at her side. "Listen to him, General, it's important." He smiled at her. "And before you ask, yes, Atton is fine."

"You have some kind of Force connection with Dustil, right, a Bond or something?" Carth asked.

Pellek automatically reached for the connection she had made with Dustil and bumped up against the barrier she had created. "It's not a Bond—that's something much more intimate, usually between Masters and Padawans. I'm connected to Dustil through the Force, but it's very superficial, just a way for us to use the Force through each other."

Carth waved his hand dismissively. "Fine, whatever. I need you to—look at him, through the Force or whatever you people do, and tell me what's wrong with him."

_What's wrong with him is that he's a damned Sith_, Pellek thought to herself. She shuddered at the thought of opening the connection between herself and Dustil again—he was too powerful, not to mention that he might kill her as soon as look at her. "I don't know, Admiral," she began.

"There _is_ something wrong with him," Bao-Dur said, frowning at Dustil. "Can't you see it in the Force? He's shadowed, but I don't believe he is himself Dark."

Carth crossed his arms over his chest. His expression was hard. "Jedi, I appreciate your reluctance, but I have to know before we get back to Republic Space if Dustil has lost his mind, or if he's fallen to the Dark Side, or if there's something else at work here. I can't determine that myself."

"General, you have to help him." Bao-Dur was more agitated than she had ever seen him, looking from her to Dustil and back again. "Someone as powerful as he cannot be permitted to fall."

"Do you understand what I'm saying, Pellek?" Carth asked urgently. He grabbed her arm and she looked into his exhausted, anguished eyes. "I _cannot_ permit him to reenter Republic space if he has fallen. I have to know, now, before we enter hyperspace."

Pellek paced away from the Admiral and the ghost. Someone's life, someone's soul, hung in the balance, and it would be her fault if she failed. "I don't know if I can," she answered both of them. "I'm not nearly as—I'm just a mediocre Jedi."

"Please, General."

"Please, Pellek."

Pellek remembered Trayus Core, remembered watching helplessly as Mira's life was taken. She closed her eyes. "All right. I'll try."

* * *

"You lose again, Human," the green Twi'lek said cheerfully. "You owe me half your rations tonight." 

Bastila nodded distractedly, eyes on the flat prairie outside the window. The grass was the wrong color, but it reminded her of Dantooine. Because she had been apprenticed to Master Zhar, she had trained there instead of at the Jedi Academy on Coruscant. Dantooine felt more like home to her than any other planet.

"Hey, double or nothing, what do you say?" the Twi'lek asked. She leaned over the table, lekku unconsciously rubbing against the collar around her neck.

Bastila started to nod—she was rarely hungry these days, anyway, and another game of pazaak would fill some more time in the endless afternoon. But a shadow fell over the table and the Twi'lek made herself scarce.

Gellan sat down across from her in the Twi'lek's seat. "Sabanyl is a card firaxa, you know," he said mildly. "You're the only one she can convince to play her anymore."

Bastila shrugged. "I have never cared for the game," she said.

Gellan reached across the table for her arm. "Master Jedi—" he began.

She jerked her arm back. "That is no longer my title," she snapped. "Do you see the Force around me? What kind of a Jedi cannot use her powers? What kind of a Jedi spends week after week as nothing more than fodder for these—these monsters? I am no more a Jedi than anyone else in this prison."

Gellan said nothing for several moments, and Bastila continued to seethe. In another life, she might have worked to suppress her anger, tried to meditate it away, but what did it matter now? She couldn't touch the Force, Light or Dark, so why not be angry? She had every right to be, trapped on this planet without hope of escape. She had thought she was so clever, that she could find out what was causing the Darkness on this planet all by herself, that the Force would guide her. Now, the only time she felt the Force was when it was being pulled out of her in the cube sessions. She spent the rest of her time trying not to lose her mind while she waited for the session that would eventually kill her.

"How long have you been here?" Gellan asked her.

"Thirty-one standard days," she replied automatically. Carth, Pellek, and Dustil should have come back for her by now. There was only one explanation for their absence, and that was they had been killed on the Sith planet. The Vintari would kill Gellan soon enough, and then she would be entirely alone.

"So you're still counting," Gellan said. She looked up at him, wondering at the significance. He smiled. "It means you haven't given up, Bastila. I thought I had, even after the Deralian woman escaped—I expected to die here until I met you."

Something about Gellan's words penetrated her angry fog. "Deralian?" she asked. "How do you know?"

"We all have a certain look," he replied. "She was only here for a couple of days, and she was in bad shape physically when she arrived. She just disappeared the first time they took her for her session—rumor has it that she destroyed an entire wing of the building on her way out."

Bastila remembered the argument between Carth and Dustil on the speeder. She leaned across the table. "What was her name?" she asked urgently.

"I didn't speak to her myself, but I heard her say her name was Case Lanatal."

Bastila gasped. "Case was here? Why didn't you tell me this before?" she demanded.

Gellan raised his eyebrows at her change of mood. "My apologies, Master Jedi. If I had known that you were interested, I certainly would have told you. I take it that you know her? Is she also a Jedi?"

Before Bastila could answer, the nearby door hissed open. Everyone in the common area looked up, and Bastila didn't need the Force to feel the fear in the room. She clenched her teeth in anger, disgusted by the fear in her own stomach. The Vintari guard scanned the room before pointing to Gellan and gesturing outside. Bastila's hand reflexively tightened on Gellan's arm. It had taken him three days to recover last time they took him. She wasn't sure he would survive another session.

The Vintari snapped something in its own language and held up the collar controls threateningly. Gellan sighed and stood. He started toward the door, but turned back quickly and kissed Bastila hard on the mouth. She gaped up at him to see him smiling. "Have hope, Master Jedi," he said. He turned without waiting for a response and walked out the door.

Bastila brought her hand slowly to her lips.

* * *

Pellek was trapped in a windstorm. Rain lashed at her face like cold needles and the wind tugged at her robes and saber. The sky above her was nearly black. Pellek brought up her arms to shield her face and felt back along the Force toward the _Ebon Hawk_, where Bao-Dur remained to anchor her in reality. The storm was Dustil's creation, an imaginary storm on an imaginary Telos, a barrier to keep her out of his head. 

"Dustil, for Qel-droma's sake, I'm trying to help you!" she called. In response, lightning flashed in the sky above her, illuminating the field of hifa she was slogging through. Cursing under her breath, Pellek kept hold of the Force connection between her and Dustil and kept pushing forward, the tall plants scratching her and dropping chaff down her robes. "All this place needs is some kath hounds," she muttered. In the distance she heard howling. "I was kidding!" she shouted into the rain.

Abruptly, the hifa ended and Pellek found herself on Espol again. "Oh, for the love of Hoth," she growled. She didn't ever want to be back on this wreck of a planet again. Dustil ran past her, stumbling badly on a leg covered in blood. Something Dark was chasing him. Pellek reached for her lightsaber but found that she was unable to move. She was only meters away from him, but it appeared that she was to be a spectator only in this—dream, or memory, or whatever it was.

"Show yourself!" Dustil shouted, his green blade out, his back to a wide chasm. He was trapped. The Dark shadow leapt at him, and Pellek gasped when Dustil fell backward from the cliff with the shadow. A woman, running with the speed of the Force, dove at the edge of the canyon and flung her hand downward.

"There's no way," Pellek whispered. But to her amazement, the woman pulled backward and she saw Dustil's hand and then his head come over the edge of the cliff. He pulled himself up the rest of the way and rolled onto his back next to the woman.

The woman, of course, was Revan. Pellek hadn't seen her in ten years, and she was surprised to find that she wasn't a young woman anymore. The eyes were the same, as was the determined set of her jaw, but she wasn't the woman Pellek had last seen leaving for the Rim after the war.

"You escaped?" Dustil was asking Revan. He looked exhausted, and was no doubt in a great deal of pain from the nasty gash in his leg.

Revan placed her hands over the wound and closed her eyes. Her hands glowed as she said, "Apparently, the True Sith haven't figured out stealth belt technology. I saw one of the Sith go after you and had to stop it, since I'm the one who ran you through to start. But I'm going back."

"What?" Dustil yelped, sitting up and yanking his leg back. "What do you mean, you're going back? They'll kill you!"

Revan shook her head, jaw clenched. Pellek knew that nothing Dustil could say would change her mind now. "There's a holocron in that cave, Dustil, and I think it's the final piece, the last thing to lead us to the source of all of this. I think this is what I've been chasing, and if I find it, I think I can go home." She pushed her hair back. "If I can," she said quietly, eyes on the ground. "You'll feel it, through our Bond, if I fall. If that happens, Dustil, you have to come find me. You have to kill me."

Dustil leaned in close to her, and Pellek could see his love for her. It wasn't romantic love, but it was love nonetheless. "Let me help you," he said.

She was already shaking her head. "I have to do this alone."

Dustil grabbed her hands. "Let me take the Dark from you. I can do it, through our Bond. You do what you have to do, and whatever they do to you, you won't fall."

"No, Dustil, it's too dangerous. You might fall yourself," Revan said. Pellek was surprised at the look of genuine concern on her face. The Revan she had known didn't waste time worrying about others' decisions or the effect her decisions had on them.

The determination in Dustil's face was a mirror image of Revan's. "I won't." He closed his eyes and Pellek could feel through her own weak connection to him the strength of his Bond with Revan. He did something with their Bond and opened his eyes. He smiled. "It's done. Now go, but if I feel one flicker of fear from you, I'm coming for you."

There were tears in Revan's eyes. She waved her hand in a familiar way, and the strength of the Persuasion reached all the way to Pellek. "You will go back to the ship."

Dustil stood and staggered away from her. He waved his hand to counter her power. "What—Case, what are you doing? Don't—"

Revan waved her hand again. "You will go back to the ship. You will not remember this. You _will not_ come after me unless I fall." Dustil shook his head hard, but Pellek saw the moment the Persuasion took hold. He mumbled something and turned away from the chasm, toward his ship.

Revan remained crouched on the ground for another moment, watching Dustil leave. Then the hard look came back to her face and she walked away.

"So that's what happened," Dustil said beside her, and Pellek found herself abruptly back on his imaginary Telos. She was sitting next to him on the shore of a lake surrounded by scrub brush and trees. It was still raining, but the black sky had lightened to pale gray. Dustil looked at her, a bit of a smile on his face. His hair was plastered to his head by the rain. "You're not supposed to be here," he said.

Pellek shrugged. "Try telling that to the Admiral. He doesn't really care about what Force users can or can't do. He just expects us to wave our hands and work it out. So here I am."

"He thinks I've fallen, doesn't he?" Dustil asked.

"Have you?"

Dustil stretched out his legs and rubbed a hand across his sodden hair. "I couldn't remember what happened on Espol, and I couldn't understand where all the Darkness was coming from." He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly a model Jedi, and a lot of that anger is mine. But some of it isn't. So, no, I don't think I've fallen. But Case is in trouble, and we have to find her."

Pellek couldn't stop herself from saying, "I can't believe she did that to you." The idea of purging Darkness through someone else was abhorrent to her.

Dustil rounded on her, anger on his face. "_I_ chose to do it. You saw that. No one made me do anything. I did it for her, because she's much closer to the Dark than I am. It's not easy for either of us, but it's harder for her. She's my Master, and we help each other."

"That's the thing about her, Dustil. She always makes you think it's your decision." Pellek glared out at the lake.

She felt Dustil's anger, then felt him force it down with effort. When he spoke, his voice was calm. "So are you convinced?" he asked. "Would you mind taking this damn collar off of me now?"

Pellek decided not to tell him that it was his life which had hung in the balance, not his freedom. She tugged backward on her connection to Bao-Dur and opened her eyes on the _Hawk_. Bao-Dur was still in the main hold, hovering anxiously nearby.

"You did it," he said.

Pellek shook her head. "I didn't do anything. He remembered what happened, what he _agreed_ to do for Revan. I was just there as a witness."

Bao-Dur cocked his head at her. "Do you think he would have been able to remember without your help? You once had a Force connection with Revan, too, remember?"

"That was a long time ago," she said. She looked over at Dustil, still slumped to the side with the collar around his neck. "I guess I should give the Admiral the good news." She got up, feeling her knees creak—how long had she been meditating?—and started toward the cockpit.

"General," Bao-Dur said. She turned back to see him watching her seriously. "You know you have to save Revan, too, don't you?"

Pellek sighed. "I know." Bao-Dur smiled, then faded out.

"Sure, sure," Pellek muttered, walking up to the cockpit. Carth was in the pilot's seat, dead asleep, with his blaster and the collar controls in his lap. She looked at her chrono and saw with a groan that she'd been in Dustil's head for nearly ten hours. She lightened her step with the Force and gently removed both items from Carth's lap. She set the blaster down in the co-pilot seat and took the collar controls back with her.

She knew from experience that after three days of stims, Carth would be out for at least sixteen hours. Pellek would let Dustil out of the collar, and then she intended to sleep for about two days. _He_ could pilot the damn ship to Revan.

* * *

Bastila was standing at the window when the common room door opened and Tepai entered with Follani and several guards. "Please return to your quarters," she ordered. The Vintari's voice was perfectly pleasant, but there was no missing the titansteel undergirding her words. Bastila clenched her fists but started toward the interior door. Tepai held her arm as she passed. "Please remain, Bastila Shan," she said. 

It took only moments for the room to clear. "What is this about, Tepai?" she asked, pleased her voice remained even.

Tepai smiled slightly, her head fur serenely blue. "I knew that you were important, Bastila, but I did not know why. Startol wanted just to take the Force from you, but I urged patience. And now we find that you know the powerful Jedi who has been looking for us. What does she know, Bastila?"

"Looking for—" Bastila began. Realization dawned, and a slow horror crept across her face. "Are you the True Sith?" she whispered.

"The True Sith are a belief," Follani said, her fur as blue as Tepai's.

Bastila could feel herself paling. She had known the Vintari were doing something Dark, but she had never considered that they were themselves Sith, or disciples of the Sith. She had been wrong, arrogant to come in here alone. "Then you were behind everything," she said, thinking of the Mandalorian Wars, Revan's rise to power, Malak, Traya, the Jedi Massacre of Katarr.

Tepai smiled. "Not everything. There are others who believe they are Sith. We did not learn of the Sith way until your Jedi enslaved us. The holocron that Startol found showed us our true potential and helped us defeat your Jedi. Now we have no need to attack your Jedi directly—others do our work for us." Her smiled disappeared. "Who is Case Lanatal, Bastila?"

Bastila shook her head. "She is just a woman I haven't seen in more than five years," she replied.

Tepai nodded, then spoke over her shoulder in Vintari to the guards in the hallway. Two of them half-dragged, half-carried Gellan into the room and tossed him roughly to the ground. He fell hard on outstretched hands and failed to rise. Bastila sucked in her breath but was gratified to see that he was still breathing. "What you are doing is monstrous, Tepai," she said quietly. Out of the corner of her eye, Bastila saw Follani shift uncomfortably at her words.

"We simply have different _knelta_, how do you say, philosophies," Tepai responded. "When your Jedi enslaved my people, they did not value our lives. This is but the same." She brought her hands together and looked at Gellan, now slowly getting his knees under him. "He has had much Force to take, but his value is nearly gone. If you do not tell us who Case is and why she was looking for us, we will take him back for another session with the cube."

"That will kill him!" Bastila protested.

Tepai nodded. "Yes. But you can save his life."

Bastila looked desperately around. The guards were impassive, as was Tepai. Gellan had gotten himself to his hands and knees, but didn't appear to have heard Tepai's words. Follani wouldn't meet her eyes. "Case left Vintar weeks ago," Bastila lied, hoping it was true. "I believe she has returned to Republic space."

Tepai narrowed her eyes, head fur going dark. Bastila was sure the Vintari was scanning her with the Force, and it made her feel dirty, violated. "She's lying," Tepai announced briskly. "Take him to my collection room," she ordered the guards. They hauled Gellan up by his arms and pushed him out of the room.

"No, wait!" Bastila cried.

"If you knew something, you would have told me," Tepai said. She turned to leave the room. "I look forward to feeling Gellan Mar joining the Force. Follani, please take Bastila for a session of her own."

Bastila knew she had do to something, anything, to stop this, but before she could move, one of the guards gave her a vicious shock with the collar and she was hustled out of the room. By the time she got her senses back, she was in the collection room with Follani across from her.

"I am sorry, Bastila Shan," Follani said. "I wish we had gone to the Force-users camp."

The panic in Bastila's chest flared up anew. The thought of spending the rest of her life in this hell was too much to bear—she could envision the days of unremitting boredom, interspersed only with the violation of the cube. She did not think she would survive long. And in the meantime, the Vintari would continue stealing Force adepts to fuel their Dark plans. Bastila felt with certainty that this moment, this decision, was important, that the future of the Galaxy hung in the balance.

Follani waved her hand and the collar-induced fog cleared out of Bastila's head, leaving only the familiar tug of the cube on the Force. Bastila closed her eyes and concentrated on pulling back on the Force. The cube was strong, but she managed to hold onto a tiny filament of the Force. She opened her eyes and saw Follani watching her with interest. It was apparent that the child knew she was doing something, but wasn't sure what. Bastila thought she had enough Force powers available to her to put some Persuasion in her voice. Though apparently older and more powerful that Bastila had initially thought, Follani was still a child. She thought she could probably force Follani to do what she wanted.

Bastila opened her mouth to speak and remembered the feeling of disgust she had whenever Tepai scanned her with the Force. Would overpowering a child's mind be any different? Persuasion was a Light side power, but it never felt like it. _You can do it too, Princess_. Bastila sighed and pulled the Persuasion away. "Follani," she said without the Force, "do you think what Tepai is doing is right? Do you agree with her?"

The child shifted in her seat. "She says the only way to protect ourselves is to be stronger than everyone else. Only when we control the Force are we safe."

The pictures of the Children's Massacre she had seen in the archives came to mind. Bastila knew that the Vintari had only started their "collection" plan after they had themselves been enslaved by the Jedi-turned-Sith. The holocron Startol and Tepai found must have persuaded them to embrace the philosophy of the Sith themselves. Bastila had studied a few Sith holocrons in the last several years and knew how powerful they could be.

She could feel the Force draining away and worried that she was already too late for Gellan. "Your sister escaped to the camp, didn't she?" Bastila asked Follani.

Follani frowned. "Yes, Limae said she didn't want to do this. She said Tepai was a bad person. But Tepai says Limae was the bad person, because she didn't use her gifts to help our people."

Bastila leaned down. "But you don't think that, do you?"

Follani rubbed her head fur anxiously. "I don't—I don't know," she said finally. "I don't think she would have wanted your friend to die just because you wouldn't help us."

"Help me escape," Bastila whispered. "You can come with us."

Follani rocked back and forth in her chair for a few moments. Bastila glanced anxiously at the cube. The Force was still being pulled out of her, and she could feel herself weakening. In another few minutes, she wouldn't have the strength to escape. She readied the tiny store of the Force she had held onto and wondered how she would overpower Tepai. Then, abruptly, Follani waved her hand and the pull of the cube stopped. She pressed a button on a datapad and the collar around Bastila's neck clicked open. "I don't want to do this anymore," Follani said in a small voice.

Bastila fell back in her chair, reveling in the sudden explosion of sensation around her. She could feel, see, smell everything again, like she had just woken up from a long sleep. She pulled on the Force and could tell that her powers were still dulled from the cube. She hoped she would have enough reserves to escape. Bastila walked around the table to Follani and kneeled down in front of her. "Thank you, Follani. That was very brave of you, and we'll both have to stay brave until we get out of here. Can you take me to Gellan?"

Follani smiled at the compliment and nodded. "He's down the hall with Tepai. We'll have to pretend you're still in the collar. Can you put the open part under your hair?"

Bastila spun the collar around and tugged her hair out of its tails so that it spilled over her shoulders. She regretted the absence of her lightsaber, but there was no time to look for it. She reached out with the Force to feel for Gellan and was rewarded by a kick from Follani. She looked down at the girl in surprise.

"Don't do that!" Follani said, fur pale. "They can tell that you are using the Force!" She stomped over to the door and palmed it open. "Walk in front of me and don't do anything dumb."

Bastila quickly swallowed her smile. The girl was right, of course. She obediently walked in front of Follani down the featureless hallway. The hum of many Force collars was like a dull headache against her Force senses, and she realized why she only saw Tepai when she was actually using the cube.

"Here," Follani whispered, and Bastila stopped in front of a doorway flanked by two of the guards she had seen in the common area. "Leave us," Follani ordered, sounding for all the world like a miniature Tepai. The guards glanced at each other, clearly amused by the authority assumed by the child, but they complied without argument. Follani waited until the guards had turned the corner to palm open the door.

Gellan was standing against the back wall of the room, clearly trying to fight the cube. His hands were holding himself up on the wall, his eyes clenched shut. Her back to the door, Tepai sat at the table with a small smile on her face. "Not long now, Gellan Mar," she said softly. She glanced over her shoulder at the open door. "Follani, are you done al—" she broke off when she saw Bastila behind her. "What are you—"

Bastila flung her hand forward and Pushed Tepai hard out of her chair. She followed with a Stasis field before Tepai could react. The Vintari froze against the wall, her eyes burning with anger. Follani waved her hand and the hum from the cube stopped. Gellan dropped to the ground. Bastila ran over to him and snapped his collar in half with the Force before Follani could even open it. She could feel Tepai fighting her way out of the Stasis field.

Bastila used the Force to help her pull Gellan to his feet. He looked at her, the bewilderment on his face almost comical. "How—" he started.

"No time!" Bastila said anxiously, eyes on Tepai. The Stasis attack Bastila had thrown had taken more out of her than she initially thought. She knew she didn't have enough reserves for another strong attack. "We must leave this place, immediately. Can you walk?"

"Of course," he insisted, but his weight was heavy on her shoulder. Bastila didn't have the spare energy to try to create a Force connection between them—they didn't come as easily to her as they did to Pellek Tran. Without a connection, she couldn't lend Gellan any of her meager Force reserves. She'd have to hope they didn't have to go far to find a speeder.

"Follani, can you take us to the speeder bay?" she asked.

Follani tore her eyes away from the struggling Tepai. "I don't know where that is," she said.

Bastila bit down on the sharp retort that came to mind and tried to center herself in the Force. She could not afford to lose control now. "All right, then can you tell me how Case escaped from here?"

Follani looked at her oddly. "The Deralian woman?" she asked. "She is still here."

Bastila gasped and glanced at Gellan, who looked equally surprised. "I thought she escaped!" she said.

Follani shook her head. "She tried, but all of us together stopped her. She is too dangerous for the cube—we can't let any part of her out of the collar. That's why Tepai wanted to know about her—we are all afraid that someone will come for her and destroy us." Follani looked awed. "Is she your friend, too? I can take you to her—this way." She ran off down the hallway.

Bastila followed as fast as she could, eye out for any guards. She wished she had the spare power for Boost—Gellan was trying his best not to slow her down, but it was plain that he was still conscious only by force of will. He was deathly pale and Bastila could feel his body shaking with the effort to remain upright. She was grateful to Follani for clearing the hallways ahead of them so that she only had to toss a couple of small Stasis fields when Vintari accidentally crossed their path.

They passed several doors with windows, and Bastila glanced inside one as they walked. It was a common room like the one she and Gellan had been in, full of sentients wearing collars. She looked quickly away, horrified. How many sentients had the Vintari captured? What could they possibly be doing with all the Force energy that they took? She shuddered and vowed to come back and destroy this place.

Follani ran back to them. "This is it!" she called, pointing to a windowless door. As they approached the door, an alarm began to sound. Follani palmed open the door and waved Bastila and Gellan in. "Hurry, they're coming!"

Bastila entered the room with trepidation and gasped at what she saw. Then the smell hit her and she had to force herself not to back away. Case was a huddled pile of torn cloth in the corner of the room. Her hair was matted in clumps and fell over her closed eyes, but Bastila could see the dark bruise under one cheekbone. There was a collar around her neck and band around each wrist.

Bastila choked back a sob and left Gellan to support himself against the doorway. She slid to her knees in front of Case. "Case? Can you hear me?" The woman's eyes opened slowly, and Bastila could tell that the Vintari had her heavily snowed under the collar. The pulse of anger from Case was palpable. "I'm going to take the collar off, okay?" Bastila said loudly, as if to a child. She reached first for the wrist bands and gasped at the condition of Case's hands. "Force help you," she whispered. Case's hands were curled in, the fingers on each obviously broken and badly reset. Bastila wondered if she could even use them. She quickly snapped the wrist bands, prompting some movement from Case, and then reached for the collar. She held her breath and broke the collar.

The Force Push that Case threw might have killed her if she hadn't expected it. Even so, it knocked her back to the doorway. Gellan moved immediately in front of her and stood facing Case, who now had her back to the wall, hair still in her face and lips pulled back to show her teeth. "Case, it's Bastila," she called from the hallway. She gently pushed Gellan's arm aside and walked back into the room. "You're with friends, but we have to leave right now." Bastila reached forward carefully with the Force and touched Case's familiar aura. The Bond between them was gone, but they would recognize each other in the Force anywhere. "It's me, can't you tell?"

The silence, broken only by the near-growl of Case's breath, stretched on so long that Bastila was afraid Case was lost, or fallen. Her anger was so powerful that she should have fallen already, but it was bleeding away somewhere, someplace not inside of Case. Finally, Case blinked and seemed to come back to herself. "Bastila?" she asked in a small voice. "Am I dead?"

Bastila smiled. "Not yet, and when you die, I hope your ghost doesn't return to Vintar. Please, I will explain when we are gone from here. Can you walk?" She had the sudden fear that Case wouldn't be able to—Bastila couldn't support Case and Gellan at the same time.

Case pushed herself off the wall and straightened. "My wounds are old. I still have the Force. And I'll walk out of here or die first. They won't take me again." Bastila breathed a sigh of relief and nodded to Gellan. All three of them went back in the hallway just as Follani was rounding the corner back to them at a run.

Case tensed and Bastila quickly held up her hand in restraint. "She is helping us escape," she explained. "Follani, which way?"

Follani was looking at Case like the woman was a giant. "I found a speeder area just outside the walls. But they're coming! They'll close the gate!"

They dashed through the open door into the bright sunlight. Case took Gellan's other arm and the three of them ran as fast as they were able across the courtyard toward the exterior walls. Follani ran ahead and ducked under the closing gate. Bastila pushed harder, sure they wouldn't get under the gate before it went down, but they just cleared the descending door. Blaster fire sparked the air around them as Vintari poured out of the building and through the side gates a few hundred meters away.

Bastila started for the nearest speeder and quickly lifted Follani into the back. Gellan collapsed into the back with her. Bastila started for the jump seat, but Case got there first. "My hands," she said, holding them away from her as if they weren't hers. Bastila nodded quickly and swung into the driver's seat. The Force trilled at her and she ducked a blaster bolt aimed at her head. She pressed the throttle down as hard as she could and started away from the city toward the green smudge of a forest on the horizon. They could hide there, if they could reach it.

In her peripheral vision, she saw Vintari leap into the remaining speeders and lift off the ground. Bastila swallowed and kept her head low. They'd never get far enough away from the speeders to hide. "Keep it steady," Case said, and stood up backward in the open jump seat. She flung her mangled hands forward and every other speeder around them burst into flame. The vehicles crashed to the ground and caught the short grass around the walls on fire. The surviving Vintari scrambled to contain the flames before they reached the main buildings.

Case dropped back to her seat, a satisfied grin on her face. Bastila felt Case add a Boost field around their vehicle, and the grassland flew by at a dizzying speed. "We should have time to get to the Resistance camp before nightfall," Case said. She looked over at Bastila. "Thank you."

Bastila nodded, not trusting herself to speak. She was exhausted, flying toward a camp she wasn't sure existed ten minutes ago with a woman she had half-believed to be dead. She knew whatever refuge they found at the camp was only temporary, that the Darkness on Vintar still had to be stopped. Case's hands looked beyond repair, Gellan was unconscious in the back of the speeder, and Follani had started to cry, but Bastila couldn't help but smile.

They were free. The Force was still with her, after all.


	14. Chapter 13

**THIRTEEN**

Pellek had never been able to understand why she wasn't arrested for war crimes after she destroyed Malachor and ended the Mandalorian War. The liberal newsvids were outraged at the destruction of the Mandalorian people, of course, but the rest of the populous simply celebrated the Republic's victory. There was an official day of mourning for the Republic soldiers who died on Malachor, but no one seemed to blame Pellek for their deaths except Pellek. Never mind that evacuating them would have alerted the Mandalorians, never mind that the soldiers had sworn an oath to her and to the Republic, never mind that it happened too fast for them to even feel pain. They were all dead, and the void where Pellek's soul used to be wasn't punishment enough. She had presented herself to the Republic Senate by holo for arrest, but they gave her a medal instead.

Pellek was alone in her quarters, watching the space traffic through her wide window, when Revan and Malak came. Pellek had ordered the guard at her door not to let anyone inside, but of course that wouldn't have stopped Revan. The woman swept into the room like a windstorm and waved her hand to turn on the overhead lights.

The view from the window changed from external to reflective, and Pellek could see Revan in the center of the room, hands on her hips. Malak's tall form shadowed the doorway. "Are you still sulking, Pel?" Revan asked. "That's not very gracious of you. Did you know the Corellian senator has moved to put your face on the two-credit piece?"

Pellek's slim hope that Revan would be equally affected by their actions burnt up like a prayer stick. "Why are you here?" Pellek asked without turning around.

"To congratulate you, of course," Revan replied. "And to invite you to come with us."

"To Coruscant?" Pellek asked, surprised. The Jedi Council had ordered all of the Jedi who followed Revan to the war to return for judgment. She had not thought Revan would go.

Malak began laughing, a low, mocking sound, but Revan threw him a dark look and he stopped. "You don't believe that we should return to the Council, do you?" Revan asked. She pushed back her dark hood, and Pellek could see honest puzzlement and worry reflected in the glass. "We didn't do anything wrong, you know that. We did what the Council was afraid to do, and what do you think would have happened if we didn't? We saved the Republic, Pel!"

Pellek still watched only the reflection of Revan's movements. "I know," she said.

Revan narrowed her eyes and said nothing for a long moment. Then she crossed the room in two wide steps and spun Pellek around to face her. Pellek looked into Revan's eyes, surprised to see that they had paled from dark brown to tan. "What happened to you, Pellek?" Revan asked. Her eyes lost a little focus and Pellek imagined Revan was searching her with the Force. The woman gasped and stepped away. "What have you done?" she whispered.

Pellek smiled tightly. "The Council promised that we would be punished if we left. Apparently, they were right. I haven't been able to touch the Force since Malachor."

Malak crossed his arms impatiently. "No Force? We're wasting our time, then."

"Quiet," Revan snapped over her shoulder. She looked back to Pellek, and Pellek could hardly stand the pity in her face. "Listen. I've told you that there is something bigger than the Mandalorians out there, something we have to stop before it reaches us. Well, I think I've found something that can stop it, some kind of ancient weapon. I've found four maps that point to way to it, somewhere beyond the Rim in the Unknown Regions. We're leaving, now, before the Council tries to stop us."

She had known Revan was lying to her on Malachor. Revan must have had most of the maps by then, and she hadn't said anything. But Pellek couldn't help but be intrigued by Revan's infectious enthusiasm. "What does the weapon do?" Pellek asked.

Revan grinned. "That's what we're going to find out. Come with us, Pel. I'll help you get the Force back, and we'll save the Republic again." She reached out for Pellek's arm. Without her armor, Pellek could feel the heat of Revan's hand against her skin.

Pellek's heart jumped. Even without the Force, she could see that Revan was practically glowing with power. She didn't doubt that Revan could help her touch the Force again. And in spite of her grief, Pellek didn't regret joining her, joining the war. It had been the right thing to do. She would do it again. She opened her mouth to accept when she saw Revan's sly glance to Malak, the tiny nod of his head that they thought Pellek didn't see. Pellek looked more closely and saw Revan's unusual pallor, the shadows around her eyes.

It was like a kick in the gut. Revan was using her again, and like an idiot, Pellek had almost fallen for it again. Her face burned with humiliation. "No. I'm returning to the Council for punishment." The words were out almost before she had decided.

Revan snatched her hand back. "What?" she exclaimed. "You know what they'll do to you! They'll break your lightsaber, and they'll keep you from touching the Force ever again. If you come with us, I can teach you things, powers the Council won't let us learn."

Pellek clenched her jaw. "No." She braced herself for anger.

Fury flashed over Revan's face, but it was replaced quickly with sorrow. Her voice was soft. "If that's your decision, Pel, I won't change your mind. But I'm sorry. Force be with you," she said, and turned away. Malak opened the door for her and held it while Revan swept outside.

As she watched them go, half of Pellek was relieved, but the other half hoped Revan would turn around and ask again. That was the half of her that she hated, because she knew if Revan had asked one more time, she would have said yes.

Pellek woke on the _Ebon Hawk_, eyes burning and muscles stiff with sleep. She rolled off her bunk with effort and staggered out of the dormitory toward the fresher. As usual, the water was tepid, and she was shivering by the time she finished. Of course, if she were being honest with herself, she would admit that she had been shivering before she had even left her bunk. She was so tired of the past, tired of reliving her failures over and over again. Her ghosts were overtaking her.

Pellek tugged her robes into place around her and found Carth and Dustil looking at a holomap in the common area. She could see hyperspace lines through the viewport. Dustil glanced up at her entry. "You look like hell," he said brightly. "I think your ghosts look more alive than you do."

She winced at the sound of his voice and almost snapped at him before she saw the smile around his eyes. He was teasing her. "Stim hangover is never worth it," she muttered.

Carth was staring at her with enough emotion in his eyes to make her uncomfortable. "I—I don't know how to thank you, Jedi," he began.

The weight of his gratitude was too much for her aching head. She didn't want to think about what would have happened if Dustil hadn't figured out what had happened on Espol. Saving lives was almost as much a burden as taking them. "You can thank me by pouring me a cup of that caffa," she grumbled.

Carth seemed to understand her discomfort because he handed her a cup and changed the subject. "Dustil and I were looking at the information from that datapad we found on Espol. It's some kind of map." He pointed to the starmap projected into the air above them.

Pellek frowned at the map. It was at a wide zoom, showing planets around the Outer Rim. A red line marked the boundary between Republic space and the Unknown Regions. "What do the blinking dots represent?" she asked. She counted five pulsing red lights scattered across the map and one white circle, larger than the others.

Carth zoomed in one portion of the map. The dot indicated a planet around a dim red star. "This is Espol, where we were. These other dots are Rakata, Korriban, and where Malachor used to be."

"Case and I found Sith holocrons on all of these planets," Dustil explained. "For whatever reason, the Force in those areas skews Dark. We found the remains of ancient places of power—the True Sith probably created them, but the modern Sith are drawn to them. It's easy to lose yourself there, even with the best intentions."

Pellek thought of Revan and her shadowed eyes. "And the last red location?" she asked.

Carth looked grim. "It's Telos," he said.

"Atris and her holocrons," she murmured, nodding. She explained for Dustil, "Last year, my crew and I found the secret base of a powerful fallen Jedi Master. I think she truly believed that she was just studying them, but Sith holocrons have a way of seducing you to listen harder than you intended. By the time I found her, she was Dark to the core."

"Not to mention batty as hell," Atton contributed, popping into existence next to Dustil. "Her handmaidens were pretty hot, though."

Pellek ignored Atton, though she was terribly relieved to see him looking well again. "One of my companions killed her, but it makes sense that there's something of a taint still there." She looked back at the map, zoomed out again to show all of the glowing dots. "You and Revan were tracking the True Sith by looking for these Dark places—did you find the source on Espol?"

Dustil shook his head. "I thought we had, but when I was fighting the Sith there a few days ago, before I was, er—"

"Shot," Carth interjected, eyes hard. "By me."

Atton choked. "The Admiral shot the kid and I wasn't there to see it? I've got to get a new agent."

"Shut up, Atton," Pellek and Dustil said at the same time. Dustil continued, "It's fine, Father, really. Anyway, the Sith told me that Case was with its master, so there must be something more powerful than it. Case must have figured that out on Espol, and that's why she went with the Sith."

Pellek shuddered. She didn't like where this was going at all. There was something they were missing about this, she was sure, something that connected all of these Dark locations to each other. "What about that circle?" she asked, pointed back to the map.

Atton leaned in to examine the map. "That's Vintar," he said in surprise.

"Vintar?" Pellek repeated. "But that means we left Bastila—"

"In a very bad place," Carth finished. "We're on our way back there now. I just hope we're not too late."

* * *

Bastila was trying very hard not to panic. They had been in the northern forest for a couple of hours now, but there was no trace of the Resistance Camp that Case and Follani claimed existed. In spite of her bold words in the city, Case had fallen almost immediately into a restless sleep, her hands tucked tightly under her arms. Gellan hadn't moved for hours, his chest barely rising with breath. Though the child was overtired and fretful, Bastila had asked Follani to check on both Gellan and Case periodically to make sure they were still alive, but Follani eventually curled up next to Gellan and fell asleep herself. 

That left Bastila to try to navigate the speeder through the dark forest. The tall trees crowded in toward the speeder, and their feathery branches seemed to be reaching for her, tugging at her hair and brushing her hands. Reflected light from the planet Vintar circled turned everything around them a yellowish green and threw odd shadows across the trees. After not hearing it for weeks, the Force was loud in Bastila's ears, almost drowning out the hum of the speeder. The forest was full of life, not all of it friendly, and Bastila was extremely conscious of both her lack of a weapon and her minimal Force reserves. She was terrified that she would never find the Resistance Camp, or worse, would reach it only to find all of her companions dead.

Bastila reached for the Force and tried to calm herself. She knew from looking at the aerial maps on the _Ebon Hawk_ that the forest was only a few kilometers deep, and Case had said the camp was just on the other side. She tried to suppress her fear that she had misjudged their direction and they were actually traveling along the forest line instead of through it. They had no supplies and would not survive a long sojourn in the woods. And she was so tired—

Suddenly the trees lit up and a blaster bolt flared across the speeder's bow. Five Vintari dropped out of the trees around them, blaster rifles aimed directly at her head. One of them shouted something in Vintari, words that Bastila clumsily translated into "State your business here!"

Bastila brought the speeder to a stop and raised her hands. "Please, we are refugees from the city. We have escaped the Force-user prison," she said in Basic. The only words she could translate into Vintari were "Please" and "Force-user." At the words, she felt a thread of fear ripple around the group.

Case stirred next to her and came fully awake when she saw the commotion around them. She rattled off a string of something in Vintari to them. Bastila caught "help" and "looking" from her words. Whatever Case said, it did not appear to satisfy the Vintari. One of them shouted and fired another shot over their heads. Bastila gathered what Force reserves she had and prepared for a fight she knew they would lose.

Follani popped up before Bastila could stop her. "Limae!" she shouted happily.

The Vintari who had been shouting lowered its weapon. "Follani?" it replied. The child leapt out of the speeder and threw herself into her sister's arms. Limae gestured to the other Vintari to lower their weapons and walked rapidly toward the speeder. "Who are you?" Limae asked in Vintari, slowly enough that Bastila could understand with the help of the Force.

"I am Bastila Shan, and this is Case Lanatal and Gellan Mar. Follani helped us escape from the Force-user prison."

Limae spoke too rapidly for Bastila to understand into a wrist comm. "Come," she ordered.

The rest of the trip went by in a blur. Bastila followed Limae's speeder through the last hundred meters to the edge of the woods. There, she saw that the "camp" was actually no more than tents scattered among the trees and up toward the low hills of the northern mountains. Perhaps fifty Vintari crowded around their speeder as they entered the camp.

Just as Bastila was beginning to panic again, a wrinkled Vintari with gray headfur approached. The others parted for the Vintari, and Bastila got the sense it was very old. "Greetings, travelers," it said in accented Basic. "I am Royei, Elder of this camp. We offer you refuge."

"Thank you, Elder," Case said in Vintari. She folded her hands and bowed respectfully.

Royei snatched Case's broken hands into her own and examined them closely. "This was done to you before, by a Dark one?" the Elder asked. There was a compassion in the Vintari's voice that reminded Bastila of Jolee, though she thought this healer was female.

Case nodded and tucked her hands awkwardly away. "I haven't been able to heal them," she said.

Bastila tried to pay attention to the Elder's response, but she had to keep jerking her eyes open. Her head was so heavy. She felt Royei's hand on her arm.

"They have taken the Force from you, child," Royei said, eyes full of pity. "You and your friends must rest and heal. Come."

Bastila allowed herself to be led like a youngling to a low tent. Inside were piles of sleeping pallets around a central fire. It was warm and smelled like tree sap and grass. Bastila nearly burst into tears in relief. Two Vintari walked a semiconscious Gellan into the tent and settled him onto a pallet. Bastila held Royei's hand, the Elder's skin rough against her palms. "Thank you, Elder," she whispered. Then Bastila sank gratefully into a pile of bedding, surrendering herself to the first warmth and security she had felt in a month. She was asleep before her head touched the pallet.

* * *

Carth eased the _Hawk_ out of hyperspace, eyes on the radar for sentry ships. He breathed a sigh of relief to see nothing but empty space around them. Dustil and Pellek had decided that actively using the Force triggered something that alerted the Vintari to their presence, so they were both focused on shielding themselves and not reaching outward with the Force. The trouble with that plan was that they couldn't look for Bastila on the surface. They would have to hope that Bastila's transponder was still working. 

Carth shook his head in irritation. He knew he never should have let Bastila take Follani to the Force user's camp by herself. He'd had the sneaking suspicion before they left that Bastila didn't know where the camp was, but he'd been so eager to get to Espol, so consumed with finding Case as soon as possible, that he'd let himself be persuaded that she would be fine.

Carth pushed away the crushing disappointment he felt at not finding Case on Espol. Thinking about it, about how they really had no idea where she might be now, did no good. He would not let himself hope that Case was on Vintar. First they would find Bastila, and then they would regroup.

He absentmindedly ran the nav checks while the computer updated itself. They were close enough to Republic space now that the computer should be able to get a signal from the Republic comm beacons. And, sure enough, the message light flashed on his comm overlay. Carth scrolled through the far too many messages, most of them work inquiries, and stopped on a familiar name. He pulled up Mission's message and leaned forward at the urgency in her voice.

"Carth, I hope you get this message, because you're not gonna believe what's going on here." There was no visual, just the audio. Carth listened to Mission describe the strange silo with the Sith holocrons inside. "I don't know where that stuff came from, but the holo transmission came from these coordinates," she said, and Carth saw that she had attached the coordinates to the message. He pulled them up while he listened to the rest of her message and was unsurprised to find that they pointed to Vintar.

He had a bad feeling about this. Mission's message seemed to confirm their suspicion that all of the Dark planets were connected to Vintar, but he didn't know how. Carth sent a quick reply back to let her know that he had received her message and would contact her later. Carth locked the nav controls and left the cockpit.

Pellek and Dustil were standing over the holoboard in the central room. They had a map of the planet projected in 2-D across the board. Dustil looked up when he entered. "The scanner's not picking up Bastila's transmitter," he said.

Carth frowned. "Are you sure there's no way to look for her with the Force?" he asked.

Pellek shook her head. "We're not safe, even from orbit. It was Dustil's contact with Case through their Bond that let them find us in hyperspace, remember? We were just lucky to escape then."

Dustil turned back to the map. "Bastila said she was going to a camp in the north, but I can't see anything like that on this map. It might be under the forest canopy where we can't see it, or it might not exist at all. Maybe we should go back to that city and see if they know anything."

"No way," Pellek said. "You didn't see that hospital, or whatever it was. Those people were Force-users, and they were wearing collars that stopped the Force. We won't escape from there a second time."

Carth made a quick decision. "We'll go down to the city in three days if we don't find the camp by then. Set the computer to listen for comm pings—maybe the camp will send us a signal."

If they were there, Carth thought. He headed toward the workbench to clean his blasters. He had the feeling he would need them.

* * *

Bastila woke to sunlight on her face. She opened her eyes slowly, reveling in the softness of the blanket around her body and the sound of the Force singing around her. The terror of her escape from the city had faded, and she felt rested for the first time since she had been with the cube. 

She stretched oddly sore muscles and saw that the fire in the center of the tent had gone out. A haze of smoke sparkled in the sunlight. Bastila was alone in the tent. A small pile of clothes were laid out next to her and she gratefully changed into the worn tunic and pants. The tunic was far too large—she suspected it had once belonged to a human male—but she cinched it with a tie. Anything was better than the white prison garb she had been wearing for a month.

She emerged from the tent into the central clearing of the camp. It was clear that the Vintari here had adapted to camp life without the conveniences of the city. A group of Vintari females were hulling some kind of nut near the center of camp, laughing and talking as they worked. A group of males near the camp's perimeter were repairing what looked like fishing tools. Throughout the camp, Bastila could feel the hum of the Force. She had not been around so many active Force users since leaving the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, and it was a comforting feeling. Idly, she began calculating how many there were and whether they were too old for significant training.

"Bastila Shan!" a Vintari called. Bastila turned to see Limae walking her way. Gellan was with her, looking far more healthy than he had in weeks.

Bastila bowed to the Vintari, who she sensed held some kind of authority around camp. "Limae, thank you for your generous hospitality," she said.

Limae grasped Bastila's hands in hers. Her headfur was a brilliant blue. "Thank you, Bastila. My sister you bring. The gods smile," she said in halting Basic.

"Limae was showing me the camp garden," Gellan said. "Somehow they're using the Force to help the crops. I'm still not sure how they're doing it, but there's no other way they could get such a yield from this climate."

One of the Vintari males noticed Limae and waved. "My mate," she explained. "I go now. Talk more later." She ran lightly across the camp and touched her headfur to her mate's in greeting.

Bastila suddenly found herself alone with Gellan, and she was strangely anxious. "How are you feeling?" she asked to fill the silence.

"Better," Gellan replied with a smile. "I can't quite remember how we got here, but I know you saved my life. My thanks, Master Jedi." The intensity of his gaze was almost physical.

Bastila could feel the heat rising in her cheeks and she scolded herself for acting like a silly child. She was a Jedi Master, a representative of the Order for everyone on this moon to judge, and she ought to act accordingly. "I trust you are as relieved as I am to feel the Force again," she said, crossing her hands stiffly behind her back. She was relieved to hear her customary reserve in her voice.

Gellan's smile faltered for just a second before reappearing. It no longer reached his eyes. "I'd almost forgotten what it was like," he replied. He tapped his head. "I never realized how loud the Force is in here. It's a wonder you Jedi can function at all."

Bastila could see from his sea-blue aura that Gellan was fairly strong in the Force. Had he been taken for training as a child, Bastila was sure he would have been a powerful Jedi, but he was far too old now to ever reach his potential.

"There you are," a voice behind them said as a hand clapped Bastila's shoulder. Without thinking, Bastila Boosted herself ten meters away and spun around, ready to fight. Her heart was thundering in her chest. She caught her breath when she realized it was only Case, now looking bemusedly at both she and Gellan. Though he hadn't Boosted, Gellan also had his hands up to defend himself.

Bastila forced herself to breathe evenly as she walked back to Case. "My apologies," she began. She was ashamed at how easily she had frightened. Perhaps the prison had affected her more than she realized. "I do not—"

Case waved her hand dismissively. "No, it's my fault. I should have realized the two of you would still be jumpy for a while." She smiled reassuringly, but Bastila could see the concern in her eyes. "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up—I've been talking with Royei, trying to find a way to get a signal off of this moon."

"Were you able to reach anyone on the comm?" Bastila asked.

Case shook her head. "The unit has a range of less than a hundred kilometers. I wouldn't have been able to reach anyone friendly even if they were in orbit. Then again, I'm next to useless when it comes to machines. Listen, I came to show you around the camp. And I'm dying to find out how you discovered this moon in a few months when I've been looking for it for five years." She looked at Bastila meaningfully, a bit of a smile on her face.

Gellan spoke up before Bastila could respond. "I may be able to do something with the comm to increase its range. Perhaps we can at least get a signal to orbit." He bowed courteously to them and left.

Case watched him as he walked into the Elder's tent. "He doesn't intrude on other people's business, does he?" she asked. "You wouldn't be able to keep me out of a conversation that started as ominously as mine did."

"It is not his way," Bastila replied, trying and failing not to smile.

Case grinned. "He's a little young for a near-middle aged woman like me, but he's easy on the eyes. And obviously taken with you, _Master Jedi_," she said, mimicking Gellan's polite tones.

Bastila focused on the Force and kept herself from blushing. "He is a good man," she said simply.

"Your mother would consider it a good match, I think."

There was too much in that sentence for Bastila to process at once. She blurted out the first protest that came to mind. "My mother? Case, I am quite certain that a Deralian farmer is not on her list of 'good matches,' were I even considering it, which I am not."

Case ignored her protest, gaping at her. "A farmer? Is that what he told you?"

"Well, yes. The oldest son. Force-sensitive, obviously, and relatively powerful, but it is too late for him to be trained, so he will never reach his full potential—" she trailed off.

Case started laughing. "Bastila, dear, the Mar family owns half of Deralia! Gellan will be head of the Trade Council in another few years. Deralia might be mostly farms and hlessi ranches, but even your mother wouldn't scoff at that!" She dissolved into laughter again, tears running down her cheeks.

Bastila knew her cheeks were flaming. She covered her embarrassment by falling back on an old argument. "I had hoped you might have learned some proper decorum in your years away, but I see that nothing has changed," she said coldly.

Case crossed her arms and returned Bastila's stare. All the amusement was gone from her expression. "When are you going to grow up, Bastila?" she asked.

"Grow up?" Bastila spat. "When are you going to realize that the only thing standing between us and the Darkness is the Jedi Code? Or have you forgotten what it feels like to let the Darkness pour through you? It feels good, Case, remember? And if we fall, who will protect the people from us? We are the only Jedi left!"

Case looked shaken. "What do you mean, the only Jedi left? What happened to the Order?"

She hadn't heard. Bastila's anger evaporated as she looked into Case's dark eyes. "Katarr," she said quietly. "A Sith Lord rose to power a few years after you disappeared. The Jedi, all but a few, met on Katarr to face the threat before it reached the Core Worlds. They—they were taken. Their life force was—was consumed by the Sith. It was a new kind of enemy, one they were not prepared to face. It was a void, and it destroyed the Order."

"The Sith that Dustil and I were tracking were like that. Terrifying. They don't want power, just to consume. They seek to destroy the Jedi because we channel the Force." Case looked down at her hands. Her fingers were curled in toward her palms, useless. "But these new Sith didn't break my hands. Their masters did that."

"Tepai?" Bastila asked. She remembered the smile on the Vintari's face as she watched Gellan fight the cube.

"And her mate," Case replied, eyes still on her hands. "She had him do it after I destroyed their Force collector. They snowed me under three collars until I couldn't feel the Force at all, and then he broke my fingers one at a time. To show me that they could do it." She looked up at Bastila, the concern back in her eyes. "But that was better than what they did to you, wasn't it? Violating you with the cube day after day—I don't know if I could have survived like you did, let alone escape."

"We must destroy that place," Bastila said.

Case nodded seriously. "I've seen this moon in my dreams, my memories. I was here, you know, after I fell. There was power here, and I knew it, but I didn't know how to use it yet. So I conquered the moon and left it occupied until I could find the source of the power. I thought then that it was on the Sith planet, Espol. I thought this moon only reflected Espol's darkness, but I was wrong. Something is here, something I triggered when I used the Dark side to take the moon, and I have to destroy it."

Bastila took Case's ruined hands in hers. "We will destroy it together," she vowed.

Case smiled. "Just like old times, right? Come on, let me show you around." She started through the camp, introducing Bastila to the Vintari they passed.

"How have you met everyone in just a day?" Bastila asked. Case was charismatic, certainly, but she was greeting these Vintari like she knew them.

Case looked chagrined. "I thought you knew. You were asleep for four days," she said.

"Four days?" Bastila exclaimed. "How could that be?"

"You and Gellan were both severely depleted of your life forces. Royei did what she could for you, but without a Force bond, you had to do most of the work yourselves. We actually thought Gellan might die on the second day, but he pulled through and woke up a few hours before you did." Case reached into a basket as they passed and scooped out a handful of hulled nuts. She handed them to Bastila. "Here, eat these," she ordered. "You must be ravenous."

Bastila ate the first nut and then had to stop herself from packing them all in her cheeks at once like a tinka mouse. She hadn't realized how hungry she was. Case handed over her canteen and Bastila drank deeply.

It took about an hour for Case to show Bastila the camp. It contained a meager armory, living tents, a healer's tent, and food stores. Bastila wondered how they would survive the winter with so few supplies. Royei greeted them briefly near the small garden. She seemed pleased with Bastila's recovery but clucked over Case's hands. She shooed them on their way, but not before insisting that Case see her later that day for another healing attempt.

They approached the group working on the fishing spears. "Bastila, you've already met Limae. This is her mate, Tykhol." Tykhol bowed respectfully and spoke to her in Vintari. Listening hard through the Force, Bastila could make out "Greetings, Bastila Shan. You honor us by returning my mate's sibling."

"Limae and Tykhol are responsible for defense of the camp," Case explained. "There aren't many weapons here, but they maintain them and assign Vintari to patrols." She quickly translated her words for the Vintari.

Limae nodded. "When we escape, we bring what we have, so few weapons here," she said in choppy Basic. "Hard to keep safe. Much fear."

"Since Tepai and Startol started their campaign to collect Force users, the Force Sensitive Vintari who could escape have come here," Case said. She waved her hand around to the thinly populated camp. "You can see that most don't make it here. The whole camp lives in fear that Tepai and her people will attack one day and wipe them out."

Tykhol's hands clenched tightly around the hook he was affixing to the spear. Case translated for Bastila. "We defeated the Dark Jedi, but we are still slaves to the Darkness. Tepai and her mate shame us all when they mistreat their own. And now we find that they are enslaving foreigners—it cannot go on." He turned to Case and resumed what must have been an earlier conversation. "We cannot leave the camp defenseless, but we can mount a force of twenty to attack the city."

Limae gestured with the fishing spear. "Not attack until ready. Must train first." She looked hopefully at Bastila. "Case say you train in Force."

Bastila looked sharply at Case, who looked positively mischievous. "I might have exaggerated your teaching abilities," she admitted with a smile. "Come on, let's get a proper meal in you, and you can tell me the best way to train twenty Force adepts to fight a city full of hostiles in two weeks' time." She bowed politely to Limae and Tykhol and started back toward the center of camp without seeing if Bastila was following.

Bastila lengthened her stride to catch up to her. She caught Case by the arm. "Case!" she protested. "How can you expect such a thing? It will take years to train these people properly, not weeks!"

Gellan's reappearance from the Elder's tent stopped Case from responding. He jogged over to them. "Good news," he said. "I've gotten the comm signal to reach orbit, and—"

"Already?" Case interrupted. "Since when did Nahonan Mar start letting his heirs learn electronics instead of ag management and diplomacy?"

Gellan grinned. "Don't worry, I learned plenty of both of those, too. Electronics is just a hobby. Anyway, I got a signal to orbit, and I got a response ping."

"A ship?" Bastila asked in surprise. Perhaps her friends weren't dead, after all. Or perhaps, she thought with a shiver of fear, the Vintari had sent a ship to find them.

"Just a directional response," Gellan replied. "Our comm is too weak to pick up a voice recording. All I know is that there's something in orbit and it's setting down ten klicks from here near the river."

"Well, let's see who it is," Case said. "There's a couple vibroblades and a blaster rifle in that speeder. We'll just get close enough to see if they're friendly."

Bastila maneuvered the speeder through the edge of the forest and started toward the river. She didn't have the heart to tell Case that it might be the _Ebon Hawk_ in case it turned out to be another false hope. But as they crested the hill, Bastila saw the familiar wedge of the _Hawk_ on the leeward plains. Two figures were approaching on foot.

"Dustil!" Case called. She swung out of the speeder while it was still moving and ran up to the young man. He was gaping at her, disbelief all over his face. Pellek, her red hair brilliant in the midday sun, stood stiffly next to him. Bastila brought the speeder to a halt and she and Gellan joined the group.

Dustil embraced Case joyfully. "My gods, we weren't expecting to find you here! Are you all right?" he asked.

"Of course," she replied. Bastila noticed that she kept her hands balled into fists to hide them.

"Good," Dustil replied, then suddenly swung and punched Case across the jaw. Case staggered away. Bastila was too shocked to move. Dustil shook out his hand and grinned hard. "That's for the Force Persuade on Espol. You try that again, woman, and I'll use a blaster rifle next time."

The silence drew out for a long moment, and then Case burst into laughter. She rubbed her jaw with her shoulder. "I guess I deserved that. Thank you for coming, Dustil. I'm so glad to see you well." Case turned to Pellek and smiled. "Pellek Tran, it's been too long," she said.

Pellek didn't move a millimeter closer. "Revan," she said shortly.

Case's eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but Dustil interrupted with a hand on her arm. "Case. It's Father. He's here."

The color fell away from Case's face so fast that Bastila thought she might pass out. "Here?" she whispered.

"On the ship," Dustil replied, concern in his eyes.

Case looked around as though searching for an escape route, but then she took a deep breath. She started walking toward the _Hawk_, then broke into a run.

"What's on the ship?" Gellan asked.

Dustil's eyes followed Case across the riverbank. "Everything, to her."


	15. Chapter 14

**FOURTEEN**

"Ha, caught you," Carth muttered to the ship's engine. He tugged out the windback mechanism and saw the faint fraying of the connective wires that confirmed his hunch—the hyperdrive was taking too long to spool down after a jump. It wasn't an urgent problem, but over time, the drive would wear down faster than it should. The diagnostic computer had claimed no problems. "Thought you could fool me, huh?" he said, unbolting the mechanism from its case so he could replace the wires.

He let the intricate work keep his mind off of Dustil and Pellek, who were going to investigate the source of the comm ping they had received on their third day in orbit. The signal was too weak to permit a voice contact, and they couldn't risk using the Force to confirm the source, so they were walking blind into the gods knew what. Pellek and Dustil had both assured him that they would be fine. Though Carth was glad to see the newfound ease between them, he still felt a bit like the two were reassuring the Force-blind old man so he would get off their backs and let them find their companion.

Carth heard the entrance hatch creak open. Returning so quickly meant they had either found Bastila right away, or had found evidence she had died. "Well, what did you find?" he called out of the engine room.

There was no response. The hair pricked up on the back of Carth's neck. He carefully set down the engine part and unholstered his blasters. He moved silently to the hallway, his back against the wall, and slid into the common area. He saw movement to his left and swung around, blasters up.

Case was standing in the room like she'd never left. "Hello, Carth," she said softly.

Carth stared at her, unmoving, unable to form words, barely able to form thoughts. He eventually noticed that his hands were shaking so badly he thought he might drop his blasters. He reholstered them without looking away from Case. "I thought you were dead," he managed. Carth didn't realize until the words were out that he had believed in his heart she was gone.

Tears filled Case's eyes and she walked toward him, arms out. Carth backed away, hand up to stop her. She froze, fist coming to her mouth. "Carth," she whispered.

"I thought you were dead," Carth repeated, voice rising to a near shout. "I thought you were dead! You left, you left with my son, and I didn't hear anything from you in five years. It's too long, Case. And now you show up here—" he choked on his anger.

"I did it for you, Carth, for everyone I love. I couldn't have lived with myself if I had led the Sith to you. And besides, Dustil knew I wasn't—" Case started.

"But I didn't!" Carth shouted. "I don't have a gods-damned Force Bond with you! I'm just a man, Case, and it's too much."

Case's eyes narrowed. "What's too much?" she asked quietly. "Being with a Jedi? Or being with me? Because you told me once that you knew very well what it meant to choose duty over love. Did you have a choice to fight the Mandalorians? Did you have a choice to fight _me_ when I was Darth Revan? I had the same duty to fight the True Sith. And if you don't understand that, if you don't know that I thought about you _every single day_ of those five years, then you're not the man I thought you were."

Carth was reminded of the last terrible argument he'd had with Ana, when he'd renewed his commission after promising he would not. He had a greater duty to the Republic than to himself, he'd told her. He remembered the dreams Case had after they destroyed the Star Forge, the look on her face when she told him she had to leave. He heard his own voice, urging her to go. But he couldn't forget the despair he felt as the weeks apart turned into years, the pity on his friends' faces as he attended another event alone. The long nights spent staring at the ceiling in an empty bed.

He stood still, unable to speak as forgiveness battled with pride.

The hope in Case's eyes dimmed. Her voice was barely a whisper. "I'm sorry," she said as she turned to go.

"Wait!" he blurted. She'd promised to come back to him. He couldn't let her leave him again. "I—I still love you, Case," he said. And he knew as soon as he said it that this, too, was true.

Then suddenly she was in his arms, and they were both crying and laughing at the same time. Carth ran his hands over her hair, down the sides of her face to her shoulders, along the sides of her body to her hips. He wanted to feel all of her to prove to himself that she was really here, that he wouldn't wake up in a cold bunk without her. He kissed her mouth, her throat, her collarbone, and reveled in her familiar smell. There were too many clothes between them. Carth backed her toward the port dormitory, still kissing her and unclasping her shirt with anxious fingers. She shoved his jacket over his shoulders before they got to the room.

He flipped her off her feet and onto his bunk in a quick move. Carth kissed his way down her body to the top of her trousers. "I've missed you, beautiful," he breathed against her stomach.

"You have no idea," Case gasped. She wiggled out of the rest of her clothes and pulled him down to her.

Their first lovemaking was like a supernova, full of heat and light and pent-up energy. Their second was quieter and more intense as they reacquainted themselves with each other. Afterward, still slippery with sweat, Case lay against his chest with her eyes closed. "I do love you, flyboy," she sighed.

Carth, on the edge of falling asleep, wrapped his arms around her. "You bet," he mumbled.

When he woke, the dim light falling from the porthole told him it was night. Case was still sprawled across him, her body beautiful and relaxed in sleep. He traced the line of her shoulder blade to her spine with his fingers. Even now, he could hardly believe she was real, that any of this was real. He wanted to ask her everything, tell her everything that had happened in the last five years, but he knew that there wasn't time. They had a mission to complete first, and as usual, their duty came first.

Case stirred and rolled away from him. She stretched her arms in front of her and Carth could barely stop himself from pulling her onto him again. She grinned, fully aware of her effect on him. "I guess you've kept in pretty good shape for a man of your age, Admiral Onasi."

On the pretense of stretching his legs, he slid a knee sideways and pushed her off of the bunk. She thudded to the ground and looked up at him with outraged eyes. "I can't say the same for your reflexes, Jedi Lanatal," he remarked.

Case huffed good-naturedly and flipped herself to her feet with the Force. She walked to the edge of the bunk and began rummaging through his footlocker. "Do you have anything my size in here?" she asked.

"I don't think so," he replied. "I'm sure Bastila or Pellek wouldn't mind if you borrowed something of theirs."

She grumbled something derogatory about Jedi robes and went across the hall to the starboard dormitory. She came back in wearing one of Bastila's robes, fumbling with the ties. Carth, who had by now rearranged his own clothes, walked to her. "Let me," he said, deftly knotting the cloth. Without looking up from his work, he asked softly, "What happened to your hands, beautiful?" He had noticed them the day before.

Case flushed and shoved her hands under her arms. Carth finished with the ties and gently took one of her hands in his own. He rubbed his thumb across her palm, feeling the calluses from her lightsaber. He stretched out her fingers slowly, stopping when she flinched away.

"I can't—I can't hold a lightsaber," she said quietly. "They used kolto without setting them first so the bones knitted this way. Startol—"

"Startol?" Carth interrupted. "He did this to you?" Anger rose in his throat, followed quickly by horror as he remembered the holo Startol showed them of Case. "We were on Vintar at the same time," he said. To think that he had left her for the Vintari to hurt—

Case shook her head and ran the back of her hand across his cheek. "It's not your fault. I pushed Dustil toward Espol because I couldn't risk him being captured, too. The Vintari are very powerful in the Force, especially their leader, and it wouldn't have done any good for us both to be in a collar. And, speaking of, we should go back to the camp. There's lots to discuss with everyone, and it will take some time to assemble the right sentients."

Carth looked at his chrono. "It's the middle of the night out there, beautiful. I don't think anyone will appreciate us waking them up. But," he stood back and grinned, "I can think of a way to pass the time. You look pretty good in those robes."

Impatience flittered across her face, but she looked at the ship chrono and then smiled. She raised a hand and the next thing Carth knew, she had Pushed him halfway across the room and back on his bunk. "Only if I get to use the Force," she said, walking toward him.

"Oh, by all means."

* * *

"No, hold your wrists like this," Bastila said. She swung her arms in an exaggerated arc to demonstrate the lightsaber form. 

"Like what? That's what I'm doing." Gellan looked intently at her hands and tried to copy her movement. Unfortunately, his stance was out of alignment and he nearly flipped himself over.

"No, it's your feet—lean forward onto your toes."

"My feet? I thought it was my wrists!" Gellan said, exasperated. Bastila couldn't stop the laughter that bubbled up. Gellan glared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter himself. He carefully held the lightsaber out to her. "The double blade doesn't seem to suit, Master Jedi. I think I'll stick with a blaster rifle—I'm much less likely to lose a limb."

"It takes a great deal of practice to become proficient," she reassured him. Bastila couldn't resist spinning the blade with a bit of flourish before extinguishing it and clipping it to her belt. She flushed at Gellan's open admiration, admonishing herself for soliciting it. Now that she could see Gellan with the Force, it was apparent that he had feelings for her, and she had to admit that she enjoyed the way his attention made her feel. No matter how sternly she told herself to stop doing it, she still found herself smiling at him and seeking his company at the Resistance camp.

"Look, there they are," Gellan observed, looking over Bastila's head at Case and Carth walking out of the Elder's tent. The air of authority around them both was nearly palpable. "It's not hard to believe she was Revan," he said. "Look how everyone in the camp is watching her."

Bastila looked sharply at Gellan. "How did you know that?" she asked. Only a very few at the highest level of the Fleet and the former Jedi Council truly knew of Revan's redemption. Dustil certainly wouldn't have told him, which left only— "Pellek told you, I suppose?" Bastila couldn't quite keep the peevishness out of her voice. Pellek had been in the Resistance camp for only a day and already she was causing trouble.

Gellan raised his eyebrows at Bastila's tone. "I think I should keep my sources to myself," he said, a smile playing on his lips. "But rest assured that I know enough to call Jedi Lanatal by her new name."

"Come, let us start toward the _Ebon Hawk_," Bastila said. The leaders of the camp and the Jedi were meeting to discuss Case's plan to attack the city. "Did you know her on Deralia?" she asked.

Gellan shook his head. "You Jedi take your initiates young, don't you? I'm sure she left Deralia before I was born. Lanatal is a fairly common name, and I imagine her family didn't advertise the connection once she became Darth Revan."

"Well, if it isn't the lovebirds," Atton interrupted, strolling up with Pellek. "And I thought we had something special, Princess," he drawled. Pellek snickered.

"I think not, Atton," Bastila huffed.

Atton and Pellek fell into step beside them, heading toward the _Hawk_. Atton mimed nudging Gellan in the side. "She told you the Jedi are celibate, didn't she?" he said. At Pellek's cough, he grinned. "Well, most of them, anyway."

Bastila flushed and looked sidelong at Gellan. He was doing the same to her, and winked. "And I suppose you're in high demand, Atton?" he asked lightly. "With your. . .insubstantial assets?"

Pellek burst into laughter at the look on Atton's face. After a moment, Atton joined in. "This one's okay," he said.

They continued toward the _Hawk_ in companionable conversation. Pellek and Gellan pulled somewhat ahead, discussing something about the Ithorians and the restoration of Telos. Bastila found herself next to Atton. "Thank you," she said quietly.

He glanced at her with raised eyebrows. "For what? Razzing your boyfriend?"

"He is not my—" Bastila cut herself off. He was just trying to get a rise out of her. "No, thank you for telling me about your struggles with the Dark side of the Force. It was a great help to me while I was captured."

"Ah. Well, I wasn't worried about you, Princess. I knew you'd do right." Atton walked silently next to her for a few moments. "You know," he said, "love isn't a bad thing."

"What?" she asked, pretending she didn't know what he was talking about.

"You know all that nonsense they feed you at the Academy about love leading to the Dark side. Pellek told us that stuff, too, but it didn't stop her from loving Mira. And I happen to know that love can lead you to the Light." He kept his eyes on Pellek's back, and Bastila could see the affection on his face.

She thought of Case's forgiveness when she learned she was Revan, the look on her face when she persuaded Bastila to come back to the light, the way she smiled when Carth was near. Bastila closed her mouth on the pious aphorisms that came to her lips. Perhaps.

They reached the _Ebon Hawk_ to find the Vintari leaders, Carth, Case, and Dustil already standing around a map of the city. The common area was crowded by the time they all packed into the room. "Welcome, everyone," Carth began, leaning casually against the far wall. "We're not here for a military briefing—we're just sorting some things out. Bastila, why don't we start with what you've discovered about the Vintari."

Bastila nodded. "As you know, the Jedi Council was destroyed on Katarr and then the last remaining Masters died on Dantooine, leaving only a few Jedi scattered around Republic space." Bastila felt a spike of pain from Pellek. "That was not where the trouble began, however. Years ago, even before the destruction of the Star Forge, the Jedi were losing young Knights. They would disappear while on missions and never be heard from again. I have been studying this problem for several years and my research led me to believe the 'True Sith' had something to do with it."

"What are these True Sith?" Royei asked. "Are they the Dark ones who enslaved our people?"

Case spoke up. "That's a good question. The Sith who conquered your planet were not the True Sith." Bastila saw the hard line of Case's jaw and realized she hadn't told the Vintari that she had been the conqueror. "Dustil and I have been seeking the True Sith for the last several years, and we found traces of them all over the Unknown Regions. I don't know how, but Vintar has something to do with them."

"The True Sith are a belief," Bastila said slowly, remembering Follani's words.

"What did you say?" Pellek asked, color draining from her face.

Bastila didn't understand Pellek's fear. "That's what Follani—Tepai, really, told me in the prison. They have some kind of device that they use to take the Force from the sentients there." And abruptly, Bastila was back there, staring at the collection device, unable to do anything, unable to feel the Force. She gasped for breath.

She felt a hand on the small of her back and then Gellan's presence warmly in the Force. "You're all right," he said quietly, to her alone. "We're not there anymore."

Bastila caught her breath and calmed herself. The others in the room were watching her with concerned expressions. She smiled brief thanks to Gellan and clasped her hands hard in front of her. "My apologies," she said. "It was a. . .difficult experience. As I was saying, Tepai and Startol are using the Force they take in the prison for something, but I was not able to discover their purpose."

Carth spoke up. "I may be able to contribute something here." He played a recording of what sounded like Mission reporting from Telos. After the recording finished, he explained, "The transmission of energy or whatever it was came from Vintar. Is it possible that they're sending the Force energy they take from the prison into these holocrons? And why would they do that?"

Case looked thoughtful. "That explains a lot of what Dustil and I found," she said. "I'm willing to bet that there are silos like the one on Telos on each of the planets we found. It sounds to me like Tepai is providing Force power to other Sith and letting them do her dirty work. These new Sith that are just voids in the Force would need that power—by controlling their energy reserves, Tepai can direct them to do whatever she wants."

"That explains why the Sith we found on Espol told me that he had sent you to his masters," Dustil observed. "But how long has this been going on?"

"I have known Tepai for a very long time," Royei said. Her headfur was a somber dark gray. "She is very strong in the Force, and very strong in her _harva_, you say perhaps pride. She believed strongly in the Jedi when they came, and their betrayal was devastating. Startol was raised to take a place on the darjuki council and the people of Vintar are his highest concern. I think they truly believe they are protecting our people."

"By enslaving and killing sentients?" Pellek asked, outraged. "How can you justify what those animals have done?"

Royei raised her hands. "Peace, Jedi. I do not endorse this evil. But we cannot make decisions with incomplete knowledge. Even if Tepai believes she is protecting our people, this has turned to madness. She will not stop until all of the Force-users are destroyed."

"All right," Carth summarized, "if I understand things, Tepai and Startol were looking for a way to defeat the Sith, found a holocron, fell to the Dark side, and started capturing Force-users to harvest the Force from. They send the collected Force power to storage areas on a few Dark planets, and then direct the new Sith that feed on the Force on various attacks."

"It won't work," Pellek observed darkly. "They'll eventually lose control of the Sith. Those new Sith won't stop until they've consumed everything in the galaxy."

"But where do they come from?" Case asked. "These new Sith are real, believe me. They didn't appear from nowhere." No one had an answer for that. Case frowned and pointed to the map. "Well, let's at least talk about something concrete. We have to destroy the prison, now, before they realize that we're planning to attack."

"Now?" Bastila asked, surprised. It was one thing to plan a quick attack when they were cut off from the Republic, but it was foolhardy to rush in alone now. "Why would we not wait for the Fleet?"

Case waved a hand dismissively. "It'll take months for the Senate to decide to do anything. We can't wait that long. Can't you feel it in the Force? We have to stop it while we still can!"

"She's right," Pellek agreed. "We're on the cusp of something here."

"I do not disagree with you," Bastila said, "but how are we to defeat them? They have an army, or at least a police force, and we have twenty untrained Force Adepts, a Fleet Admiral, and a handful of Jedi. Suicide helps no one."

"You'd be right if there weren't rooms full of Force Adepts waiting to be liberated," Case retorted. She had that determined grin on her face that Bastila had become very familiar with. "We'll make a dual strike, one to the headquarters where Carth has been, and one to the prison where you and I have been. If we hit the headquarters first, they should drop their guard at the prison, and we'll be able to get in and release the prisoners. If even a few of them are trained Jedi, we can use them to finish the attack. Once Tepai and Startol are out of the picture, the rest will fall."

"There should be enough weaponry on the _Hawk_ to outfit the attack decently," Carth said. "But I'm concerned about using civilians for this mission. Elder Royei, I respect the Resistance, but if your people panic under fire, they'll put us all in jeopardy."

Royei nodded respectfully. "Your concern is valid, Admiral, but we are not wholly untrained."

Limae burst into the conversation. "We train, we fight," she said angrily. "You not see fear. Do your job, we do our job."

"My Battle Mediation should help keep the fighters together," Bastila contributed reluctantly. She knew that Case was right—months would go by before the Senate finished debating and authorized a Fleet strike. And as much as she personally wanted to see the prison destroyed, she knew that removing the Dark threat from the galaxy was her duty as a Jedi.

The group fell into discussion about the potential outcomes of the attack and the best means to accomplish it. Out of the corner of her eye, Bastila saw Pellek's other ghost, the Zabrak, appear next to her. He and Pellek began an intense whispered conversation that was drowned out by the group's discussion. Pellek began angrily but the anger was slowly replaced by a blankness that Bastila couldn't read. "We have to destroy the new Sith at the same time," Pellek announced. "It'll be distracted if its masters are distracted."

Case looked up from the map, respect in her eyes. "You're right," she said. "I didn't think of that. How many will you need?"

"I can do it alo—" Pellek began.

"I'll go with you," Dustil interrupted. "I have a score to settle with that Sith."

Everyone went back to the maps, satisfied that the problem was solved. But Bastila saw both Atton and the Zabrak standing to the side, watching the Exile with worried eyes. Pellek had something planned, something her ghosts didn't like at all. The Force shimmered around Pellek the way it often did around Case. Destiny was hovering around her.

Bastila wondered if Pellek would return from Telos at all.


	16. Chapter 15

**FIFTEEN**

Pellek tossed the last bag of blaster bolts out of the cargo hold of the _Hawk_. Tykhol caught it against his chest and waved a hand up to her, saying something in Vintari. Pellek, assuming he was just acknowledging the catch, shouted down, "Yeah, thanks!" Tykhol shook his head, repeating whatever he had said.

"He asked if there were any more rifles in here," Revan said, coming up behind her. She walked to the edge of the hold hatch and called down something in Vintari. Tykhol waved up and walked away.

Pellek was already on her way out of the cargo hold. "Pel, wait," Revan said. Pellek froze in midstep, hand on the hatch. "You've been avoiding me all week," Revan continued, walking around to face Pellek. In doing so, she blocked the doorway. Pellek couldn't get away unless she pushed through Revan.

Typical. Revan had maneuvered her into a place where she had to either look like a scared youngling or talk to Revan like the woman wanted. Pellek stood straight and looked Revan in the eyes. "It's been a busy two weeks," she said truthfully. The Jedi were training the Force adepts how to use their powers in battle. "And we have nothing to say to each other, Revan."

Revan frowned. "I don't understand your anger. Is it because I became Darth Revan?" she asked. "I've been redeemed, you know. New name and everything. It wasn't your fault, Pel. It wasn't because of Malachor."

"Of course it wasn't my fault!" Pellek exploded. It was so typical of Revan to think that others felt guilty about her own fall. "How could it have been? You'd already fallen by then, you and Malak both! All of that death on Malachor must have just been intoxicating to you."

"So you knew," Revan said quietly. "I was never sure if you could see it in us or not. I was never ashamed about my Darkness, except when I was with you. Malachor wasn't a Dark act, though—we had to do it to end the war."

"You weren't there," Pellek growled. If she closed her eyes now she would see the bridge of her warship around her, feel the shockwave of the mass shadow generator. "You didn't feel all of those soldiers die. It _damaged the Force_, Revan. It created a—a void that can't be filled. Where do you think these new Sith came from? _We_ created them."

It was the answer to the question Revan had asked on the _Hawk_ a week ago, the one thing Pellek knew Revan didn't understand about the new Sith. "How do you know this?" Revan asked, eyes narrowing.

Pellek could swear she heard Kreia's harsh laughter. "It doesn't matter. I gave the order at Malachor, it was my crime. I knew I shouldn't have, but I let myself listen to you again and again. That weakness was my mistake."

"Pel, I know I manipulated your feelings for me, but—" Revan began.

Pellek gave a bark of laughter that might have been a sob. Somehow she couldn't keep herself from saying things she thought she had buried. "I loved you, Revan. But hell, everyone loves you, don't they? Malak, Mandalore, the Admiral, his son. Your crimes get forgiven, even by yourself. Well, _love_ isn't enough for my crimes."

Revan was suddenly holding her hands. "That's not true, Pel. You've always loved, that's what made you special. That's what lets you make those Force connections—you see the good in people, and you love that goodness. You're special, you always have been."

"She's right, General," Bao-Dur whispered in her ear. Pellek knew he wouldn't be visible if she turned her head, but she could feel him in the Force. "Everyone in your army loved you, even after Malachor. Everyone on the _Hawk_ loved you."

Revan continued, almost desperately, "Anger leads to the Dark side, even when it's against someone else. Blame me if you want, but don't—"

Pellek jerked her hands away. She wouldn't let Revan lull her into a lie this time. "Don't you get it?" she hissed. "I don't blame _you_. That would be like blaming a kinrath for being poisonous—you can't change your nature. I blame myself." She shoved past Revan and off the ship.

* * *

Bastila paused as Pellek blew by, anger trailing the Exile like a cloud and practically shaking the trees between them. Bastila briefly wondered what could have happened to create such a disturbance in the Force, but her attention was taken up by a hand pushing her hair away from her face. The Exile's problems went quite to the side as Bastila smiled and leaned back into Gellan's kiss. 

"We're neglecting our duties shamefully," she murmured against his lips.

"Surely we untrained Force adepts can go one afternoon without your wisdom," he replied, moving from her lips to the line of her jaw.

"You as well?" she asked, pushing him away teasingly.

His dark eyes crinkled in a smile. "Not me, Master Jedi. I'm afraid I'm a very poor student. Remedial education may be called for." He took her hands in his and kissed his way up her wrists to the sleeves of her Jedi robe.

They were in a copse of trees not far from the _Ebon Hawk_, the shaggy branches of the evergreens shielding them from casual view. Bastila was pressed up against crossing tree roots that lifted from the ground like a giant's knees. The afternoon air was brisk and scented with pine.

Perhaps it was Atton's sly comments about love leading to the Light, or perhaps it was seeing how Case and Carth reveled in each other's presence. But somehow, in the past two weeks, Bastila had allowed her restrained attraction to Gellan become something much more. Maybe it was because they trained and worked with each other every day, or maybe it was the constant stress that the camp would be discovered, but the feelings between the two of them grew faster than she could have imagined. In spite of the short time she had known Gellan outside of the prison, Bastila had never felt so completely comfortable with anyone before.

She ran her hands along the back of Gellan's tunic, feeling the rough fabric catch on her skin. The exposed skin of his neck was hot to her touch.

Equally as exciting as the feel of his body was the touch of his mind. She had never been intimate with a Force sensitive man, and she was surprised at how quickly their auras intertwined. Not a Bond, of course, but she could hear his heartbeat thrumming against hers, feel his pleasure and nervousness and joy as clearly as she could her own. Bastila concentrated and reached for him with the Force, showing him how to see her with those senses. He caught on immediately, pulling her to him. His emotions spun with hers, each pulling the other higher and higher, into an impossible spiral. Bastila arched her body against him, feeling the last threads of her reserve falling away—

—and there it was, a clear path to the Force, shining with power and promise. She could take Gellan's feelings for her and use them to make herself stronger. There was power all around her for the taking—she just had to open herself up to it, just had to let her building ecstasy show her the way. She just had to—

"No, Gellan," she gasped, pushing him back. "No, _no_." She winced at the panic in her voice.

Gellan practically leapt off of her, eyes wide. "I thought—I'm sorry—are you a—" he fumbled.

"Of course not," she snapped. "Would you believe the empty words of a ghost?" She covered her embarrassment with anger.

Gellan's initial look of horror moderated into confusion. "Then what's wrong?" he asked. Bastila could still feel his emotions, frustration tangled with concern tangled with the aftermath of interrupted passion.

Bastila firmly disengaged herself from him, unspiraling their auras in the Force and getting to her feet. She felt her connection to his emotions fade, leaving her alone in her head with a confused tangle of her own. She brushed evergreen needles from her robes. "I like you very much, Gellan," she began.

Still seated on the ground, Gellan leaned back to look up at her. "I gathered that," he said.

She refused his invitation to smile. "I am a Jedi, and worse, I am a Jedi who has fallen to the Dark side." She clenched her hands at her sides. "I was redeemed, but it is an easy path back to the Dark. Unbridled emotion breaks our self-control, and self-control is what keeps us in the Light. I—I can't trust myself to be with you, Gellan."

Gellan got to his feet. "Let me help you," he said, brow creased with worry. "I've seen your—your presence, or whatever you call it, in the Force. You won't fall."

"You don't know that!" she said sharply. "You can't feel what I feel, all of the time, every day. There is a reason that the Council forbids Jedi to love." Even as she said the words, she wondered if they were true. Perhaps Atton's empty words weren't so empty.

"But what about Jedi Lanatal?" Gellan asked. "She obviously loves Admiral Onasi."

Bastila's resolve wavered before she yanked her reserve around her like a cloak to quash her doubts. "Being a Jedi is more than wielding a lightsaber and the Force. We have a Code. If we abandon it, then the Jedi are truly gone. You and I should not be together again."

Gellan frowned at her, an odd look of concentration on his face. "You don't mean that," he said flatly. "I can _see_ it in you. That's not what you want, Bastila."

How had he seen her true feelings? Bastila held her hand out like a shield against him. "It doesn't matter, Gellan, I'm just—I'm sorry." She brushed past him and started toward the _Hawk_.

"Bastila," she heard behind her. "Wait—"

She Boosted herself into a run, knowing Gellan couldn't follow at her speed. She recited the Code in her head over and over, _there is no emotion, there is no emotion_, as the trees blurred by. The words were familiar, but this time, they gave her no comfort.

* * *

Carth frowned at the datatablet. The losses continued to be unacceptable. No matter which scenario he ran, no matter how he set up the confrontation, most of the civilians in the camp died in the attack on the city. Limae and Tykhol had trained their people surprisingly well with their limited resources, but a handful of lightly armed civilians just wasn't enough. 

"You look frustrated, Father." Carth looked up to see Dustil coming out of the north woods, carrying a string of gutted silver fish from a tall branch. He was wet to the elbows and grinning.

"That's a nice catch," Carth observed. Dustil jammed the end of his pole into the ground and squatted down next to Carth.

"Yeah," he said, "you should see the stream just up that hill. It's so full of fish that you could almost just reach in and pull them out. After Bastila canceled her class this morning, I decided to give my trainees the day off, too, and a few of us went fishing. The camp will eat well tonight, that's for sure."

Carth frowned. "Why did Bastila cancel her class?" They were all racing to get everyone trained for the attack before Startol and Tepai decided to stop ignoring the camp and launch a preemptive strike. Even one missed class could mean the difference between success and failure with the thin margins they had.

Dustil shrugged and rolled his eyes. "Who knows why Bastila does anything? She's probably off meditating somewhere. Though I think everyone could use the break. We've been pushing them pretty hard, and it's no good for them to burn out before the attack." He stretched out his legs and leaned back against a tall tree. "This is a nice moon, if you exclude the crazy leaders and their kidnapped Force adepts. It kind of reminds me of the southern continent of Telos, remember, where we went camping that time?"

Carth remembered. Dustil had been eight, and Ana was preparing for the defense of her much-delayed dissertation. Carth's squadron had been on back-lines duty that four-month, so Carth had been able to time his leave to come home for the defense. One look at Ana's normally spotless office covered in reams of paper and piles of datapads and Carth knew he had to give her some space to prepare. He and Dustil loaded up the speeder and spent two weeks camping in the woods. It had been two of the best weeks of his life. "You caught that big triyan fish and I thought it was going to drown you before you got it back to shore," Carth said, smiling. "You got it, though."

Dustil shook his head and grinned. "I was determined to eat that fish, even though triyan tastes like mud. You showed me how to cook it, and I was so embarrassed when I finally ate it. It was terrible. But you were eating it, so I did too."

"I was only eating it because you were," Carth responded. "Too bad that kath hound came into camp while we were asleep and took the rest of it."

"What did you really do with it?" Dustil asked wryly.

"Oh, I threw it into the river as soon as you were asleep. I loved you, son, but I wasn't going to eat triyan for five days if I could avoid it."

They both laughed at the memory. A comfortable silence fell and Carth reluctantly went back to the datatablet. He tried running a scenario with air support from the _Hawk_, but that only resulted in a ten percent casualty decrease. The _Hawk_ was made for space, not atmosphere, and she wasn't maneuverable enough to cover a small band of sentients against superior fire. Using the gun turrets risked too many civilian deaths inside the city.

Dustil glanced over at what Carth was doing. "Still trying to figure out a battle plan?" he asked.

Carth ran a hand through his hair. "Case is convinced I'm underestimating the amount the Force will contribute to our attack, but I've only found a couple of scenarios that work at all."

Dustil pointed out the _Hawk_. "What if you use the ship to create a distraction out of town, and then flank the attack in on the opposite side of the city?"

"That's one of the scenarios that works," Carth said approvingly. "We'll probably have you do that before you and Pellek leave the system. But all of these scenarios are thinner than I'd like. If something doesn't go as planned, which is always the case, they'll burn up." Carth looked at his son as Dustil scrolled through the attack scenarios. The serious concentration in his eyes was Ana's, but the determined set of his jaw was all Case. "You have a good head for this," Carth said. "You've had a good teacher in Case."

Dustil glanced up, amused. "I know Revan was supposed to have been some kind of tactical genius, Father, and Case is brilliant, but don't knock genetics. I used to win the Valenta twins' allowances over games of Strategem."

Carth was about to inquire further when a rustling of tree limbs caught his attention. Both he and Dustil were on their feet with their hands on their weapons when Gellan came out of the trees. The normally composed young man wore a look of extreme consternation, which he immediately covered when he saw the two Onasis. "Admiral, Master Jedi," he greeted them politely. "I didn't expect to see anyone on this side of camp."

"Just enjoying the afternoon," Dustil replied. "What's bothering you, Gellan? You're leaking frustration through the Force like a sieve. Where's Bastila?"

If Gellan was surprised at Dustil's ability to read him, he didn't betray it. "Jedi Shan went to the Hawk, I believe," he replied smoothly. "I've been trying to master the advanced form of Force Stasis. It's harder than it looks."

Carth could tell that Gellan was lying, that something had upset him, but Dustil grinned and didn't notice. "If you master it at all, you're doing better than me, let me tell you," Dustil said. "I've been trying to manage it for the last five years, and I've just about given up all together."

"Have you contacted your family, Gellan? I'm sure they'll be ecstatic to know you're alive." Carth asked, changing the subject. Case had told him that Gellan had been in the prison for close to two years.

He thought he saw a flicker of relief at the change of subject when Gellan answered. "No, I've set an automatic message to send when Jedi Onasi and Tran take the _Hawk_ out of the system. I don't want to call attention to the camp's position by sending a long distance transmission." He smiled. "My sister will be more than happy to stop studying to be on the Trade Council and go back to her art."

"You know, you could go back with Dustil and Pellek," Carth said. "You could get a transport to Deralia from Citadel Station. I'm sure your family wouldn't want you risking your neck in this attack on the city."

Gellan stiffened just a millimeter. "I appreciate your concern, Admiral, but I am my own man. I have as much cause to destroy Tepai's prison as anyone here and more than most. I will not leave until the job is done."

Just then, the low hum of distant but approaching air vessels came from beyond the south end of the camp. Carth squinted through the tree canopy. The _Hawk_ would be much louder, which meant they had to be Vintari airships. A horn sounded from the south sentry, then another from the east. That could only mean enemies were approaching.

Carth, Dustil and Gellan all started toward the center of the camp. Pellek ran to meet them. She was carrying her pack and had one lightsaber ignited. "The sentries spotted four air ships at five klicks out and at least fifteen speeders at ten," she reported. "Startol is transmitting a comm broadcast that if the camp gives up and returns to the city, no one will be harmed."

"That's a lie," Dustil said. "If they're not killed outright, everyone will go into the prison. We can't surrender."

Pellek smirked. "Obviously. Admiral, Royei invoked the emergency evacuation procedures. She wants you and Revan to hold the camp until the vulnerable population gets into hiding."

Carth nodded, mentally calculating available weaponry and the likely strength of the opposing force. "Right. You and Dustil need to get going. Case was doing something on the _Hawk_ this afternoon, but she may already be on her way back. If you see her and Bastila, brief her on the situation and tell her to comm me when she's in position. Gellan, you're with me."

Dustil reached out and gripped Carth's arm before Carth could start toward the camp. "Force be with you, Father. We'll be back after we clean Telos of the Sith."

Carth tore his mind away from strategy and looked into Dustil's eyes. Ana's eyes. "Good luck, son. I'll see you in a few days." Dustil nodded and then he and Pellek took off at Force-assisted speed toward the _Hawk_. Carth cleared his throat and waved Gellan along with him into camp. They had a battle to fight.

* * *

Bastila entered the passcode and the _Ebon Hawk_'s hatch creaked open. A quick glance behind told her that Gellan had not followed her from the forest. She walked into the familiar scent of titansteel and engine grease, hearing her boots clank hollowly under her feet. Automatically, she swept the ship with the Force and her heart sank to feel Case's sharp presence aboard. She had hoped to be alone. 

"Bastila?" Case called from the main hold, cutting off any chance Bastila could leave without being seen. Case appeared at the end of the hallway, looking out of costume in borrowed Jedi robes. Her dark eyes, oddly contrasting with her light hair—_like Gellan_, Bastila thought unintentionally—looked concerned. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Bastila ran her hands quickly across her face, vainly trying to brush away the wetness of her tears. Her hair was out of its tails and stuck to her face damply. "Nothing," she said. "I was merely looking for my—my lightsaber tools."

Case frowned. "What happened? Where's Gellan?"

A perfectly calm, dismissive response came to mind, but to Bastila's horror, she burst into tears instead. "He—I—I told him we couldn't—" The more she tried to stop her tears, the faster they flowed. Had all of her self control dissolved so quickly?

Case's arm was around her shoulders and she led Bastila into the galley. She sat Bastila down at the small table and busied herself at the counter. Bastila stared numbly at the scratched tabletop and covered her flaming face with her hands, suddenly missing Jolee and his wry wisdom. She hated that it was Case who saw her like this.

Case pressed a cup of caffa into Bastila's hands and sat opposite her. She waited for Bastila to take a few sips of the hot liquid and for her sobs to settle into sniffles. Case leaned across the table, eyes hard. "Did he hurt you?" she asked quietly.

Bastila jerked her head up. "What?" she exclaimed. "No, no, of course not!" She realized what Case must have thought when she came to the _Hawk_ disheveled and teary. "He would never hurt me."

Case sighed in relief. "Well, that's good news. Especially for him. Then what is it? It obviously involves him somehow."

What was it about Case that made Bastila pour out her heart to the woman? Even when they could barely stand the sight of each other on Tatooine, Case had gotten Bastila to talk about her mother. It was like Force Persuade without the Force. "Gellan and I were—well, we were intimate, and when I got—er, close, I felt—the Force—"

A slow smile spread across Case's lips. "Ah, love with a Force sensitive man. It's quite a different experience." Her smile turned into a grin. "I take it you never, er, experimented at the Academy."

Bastila kept herself from blushing and took what she hoped was a dignified sip of caffa. "No."

"Have you ever—" Case began.

"Of course I have!" Bastila snapped. "I am twenty-eight years old, not a youngling. Why does everyone assume I am—" she stopped herself with effort. Case was almost as much of a tease as Atton. "I could feel the Force right there in front of me, and there was so much power. It would have been so easy to fall. I—I was afraid. I stopped. I told Gellan we could not be together again." The tears were back, but this time she did not let them fall.

"Oh, Bastila," Case said softly. "You love him, don't you?"

Bastila hesitated, then nodded.

"Then you know that love doesn't lead to the Dark side," she said.

"How can you say that?" Bastila asked. "Don't you feel it, right there, waiting, tempting you every time you touch the Force? Everything was so easy until I fell, and now it's all I can do to block out the Dark. How do you ignore it?"

Case walked to the counter to pour herself another cup of caffa. She sat back down and sighed. "I don't." Before Bastila could protest, she continued, "I see the Dark in the Force, too, just like you do. Just like Dustil does. I think people who don't see it, people who have never touched the Dark, just don't realize it's there. It's all the same Force, Bastila. You can't separate the Dark from the Light."

Bastila could see Case's aura strongly, as she had always been able to do. It was the hazy slate of an August day on Dantooine. Case had never been strongly Light in orientation, but Bastila saw her choose the Light course again and again in their travels. On top of the Rakataan temple, Bastila had tried to tempt Case to the Dark, but she had known in her heart that she could never succeed. Case loved, as Jolee had loved, and her love kept her anchored in the Light.

Case reached across the table and cupped Bastila's hand in hers. "I don't claim to understand the Force. I don't know if it actually guides us, or if it keeps the galaxy balanced, or if it's just a natural event, like gravity. But I know that _we_ can choose, and if you choose the Light, it doesn't matter if the Dark is outside your window. Choose love, Bas."

Bastila clenched Case's hand like a drowning sailor. "I'm afraid," she whispered.

"I know," Case said tenderly. Then she grinned, mischief glinting in her eyes. "But I know a certain Deralian farmer who would be happy to help you overcome your fears. And from the look of him, I think he could help you overcome those fears over and over again."

Bastila started to scowl but laughed instead. "I think I will keep that to myself. Thank you, Case. You are truly a good friend."

Case opened her mouth to reply, but they were both stopped by Dustil skidding into the galley, Pellek on his heels.

"Startol! He's attacking the Resistance Camp!" he exclaimed.

Case leapt to her feet. "How many men?" she asked.

"We left before we could get an accurate count," Pellek said. "But preliminary reports are of four light airships and at least fifteen speeders."

Bastila instinctively felt for her lightsaber. "We must go back to the camp immediately."

"No," Case and Dustil said simultaneously. Case tossed him a quick grin and then continued. "Dustil's right. He and Pellek have to get off the ground before they send in heavy air defense. They have to get to Telos before the Sith reaches the Force reserves there. That's still the immediate threat to the Galaxy. And we have to get to the city before the battle ends."

"Just us?" Bastila asked, then realized what Case meant. "You think the prison will be unguarded. We can release the Force adepts there."

"Exactly," Case said. "Carth's been troubled about our plan to attack the prison anyway, so this may be exactly the break we've needed. But we've got to go, now, before Startol realizes we're not in the camp."

"Father will hold the camp as long as he can, then fall back into the forest and hills until you come back with the Force adepts," Dustil said. "Now get going, both of you."

Case gave Dustil a quick hug and raised a hand to Pellek. "Force be with you both. We'll see you in a few days." She turned to Bastila. "Come on, let's get the speeder out of the hold."

A few minutes later, Bastila ducked away from the turbulence of the _Hawk_ lifting off and pressed the speeder throttle down as hard as she could. In the jump seat, Case was sending a quick coded comm to Carth to let him know what they were doing. To the east, she could see smoke rising through the trees as the Resistance burned the camp behind their evacuation. She spared a thought for Gellan, who certainly had gone back to the camp after she left. He was a competent Force user and could handle himself. She hoped he would be fine.

Resolutely, Bastila turned her face away from the camp and toward the city. Everything had changed in just a few hours. Could the Force have led them to this moment? She shook her head and smiled a little, letting the battle adrenaline fill her up. She didn't know what the Force had in mind anymore. And maybe that was for the best, at least for now.


	17. Chapter 16

**SIXTEEN**

_A/N 5/10/07: Terribly sorry about the long delay, folks. Rest assured that I haven't given up! When last we left this story, Carth and Gellan were preparing to defend an attack on the camp, Case and Bastila were heading toward town to rescue the Force Sensitive prisoners there, and Dustil and Pellek were leaving for Telos to confront the new Sith they think may be waiting for them. We pick up where we left off—_

* * *

Pellek kept her eyes on the viewscreen and fired off another volley of turret fire. Two heavy fighters were tailing them as Dustil tried to get the _Hawk_ far enough away from the system to jump to hyperspace. He wasn't as gifted a pilot as his father, but the _Hawk_ was built for speed, and they were gaining on the fighters. 

The ship rocked hard to the right and Pellek was thrown up against the wall of the narrow turret. She cursed and spun the turret, looking for the target. She let off a quick round just ahead of the fighter, and it ran into the fire before it could correct its course. It angled away, fuel vapor crystallizing into snow on its wings. Her radar blipped and she spun backward, cursing again as she saw three light fighters in formation racing toward them.

She smacked the internal comm. "Get us the frack out of here, Onasi! Those fighters will be on us in ten seconds!"

"Shut up and shoot!" Dustil shouted back at her. "Eight seconds to hyperspace clearance!"

Another burst of fire clipped their rear wing, and Pellek fired madly against the mounting numbers. One light fighter went up in a brief fireball, but the others barreled down on them. Pellek held her breath, knowing she couldn't hit them in time—

Hyperspace lines filled her viewscreen and she let out a sigh of relief. They were clear. "Good job, kid," she said through the comm.

Dustil snorted. "I've been run out of better systems than that one. Computer says we have three days in hyperspace before we reach Telos. I have some nav cleanup to do up here before I put it on autopilot, so I'll take first watch."

That suited Pellek just fine. She slid down the ladder and made her way to the galley, where she liberated one of her bottles of Corellian whiskey and a glass. She poured a stiff measure and raised an imaginary toast. "To dead friends," she said. She drained the glass and poured another.

"Are you sure that's a good idea, General?" she heard softly beside her.

Pellek didn't even look in Bao-Dur's direction. "I'm toasting dead friends, Bao, not undead ones. Go back to your corner of the Force and leave me be." She felt him blink away, but not before feeling the worry that he projected to her.

Two glasses and an hour later, Dustil entered the galley from the front of the ship. She peered at him over her glass. "I thought you were cleaning up in the cockpit," she said.

Dustil took a seat at the table. He raised the bottle inquiringly and she waved a hand in acquiescence. He poured a small glass and sipped. "I was, but then one of your ghosts found me and said I needed to talk to you before you drank yourself into a coma."

She laughed, finding that funnier than it really was. "Bao-Dur is a chronic worrier and a teetotaler to boot. It takes more than a few glasses of booze to put me under the table."

"It was Atton," Dustil said flatly.

That was even funnier. "Atton! Hell, he flew the _Hawk_ with a hangover half the time. He knows how much I can drink. Don't worry, a little Force Heal and I'll be able to take my watch with no problem."

Dustil raised his eyebrows. "I don't think it was the booze he was worried about, Pellek. He said you've shut him out completely since we landed on Vintar."

"So?" she replied, taking another swig. "Just because I have ghosts trailing me around doesn't mean I have to talk to them all the time. Maybe I'd like a little time _by myself_," she said, glaring at him.

Dustil couldn't take a hint. "I won't pretend we're friends, Pellek, but I've felt your Force aura, and there's something strange about it, something that's connected to these ghosts of yours and this new breed of Sith, and the reason we're going to Telos." She reached for the bottle but he snatched it away from her. His voice was hard. "I don't have any intention of getting killed on Telos because you've got some kind of emotional hangup about the Mandalorian War, all right? So you'd better tell me what the hell's going on here or I'm leaving you on this boat while I deal with the Sith myself."

Pellek could feel Atton's presence hovering behind Dustil but he didn't appear. Pellek blew out her breath. "Fine. But give me the damn bottle first." She held her hand out expectantly until Dustil handed it over. She poured another glass and tossed back half of it before setting it down. "I should have known Revan would fill you in on my escapades in the Mandalorian War. So you know that I destroyed Malachor, and I killed all of my soldiers on the ground, plus half the Mandalorian fleet."

"You were connected to your men, through those Force connections of yours," Dustil said quietly. He raised a hand defensively to her unspoken question. "Don't ask—it's a long story. But I know about Malachor, I know exactly how you felt. I'm actually surprised you aren't dead."

She laughed at that. "I thought I was, but no such luck. Turns out the only reason I didn't die down there is because I cut myself off from the Force. That's not something you can just do, you know. You can't get it back."

Dustil looked like he might argue with her about that, but he simply said, "You did get it back, though."

There was that ghostly laughter from Kreia again. "Nope, turns out I didn't. See, I take it from the people around me, like a parasite. I don't actually touch the Force at all. I'm _just like_ that Sith we ran into on Espol, and we're apparently dangerous as hell. One of my traveling companions had big plans for me, was going to use me to destroy the Force entirely. A lot people died trying to stop her, people I loved, people who wouldn't have been following me if I hadn't made those—connections—with them. And now we find that I'm not the only one of these—these abominations. There's other ones out there, and maybe they're further gone than me, or maybe they were Sith to begin with. But other than orientation, there's no difference between us. I have to stop them, us, all of this before it tears up the Force beyond repair."

Dustil considered her words for several long moments as he slowly drank his whiskey. Finally he asked, "Did you tell Case about this?"

Pellek rolled her eyes. "Why, so she could help me? She's helped me enough, thanks. I don't need a Sith Lord to fix my mistakes."

If she had hoped to get a rise out of Dustil, she was disappointed. "Then what are you going to do?" he asked quietly.

"I'm going to help you destroy those holocrons on Telos. They're all connected, you see. If we destroy one, we'll break the cycle. The rest of them must be destroyed, too, but destroying one should be enough to disrupt the Sith for a while."

"Is that all you're going to do?" Dustil asked.

_No_. "Yes," Pellek said. "That's all." She picked up her glass. "Now get out of here and let me finish my drink in peace."

Dustil looked at her closely and she could feel him poking around at her with the Force. She blocked him out easily. With a final glance, he got up and went back to the cockpit. "I'll tell you when it's your watch," he said.

"You got it, kid." Pellek raised her glass in salute and settled back in her chair. She closed her eyes and thought about Mira.

* * *

"Are you out of your damn mind?" Carth shouted into his comm. Looking back up, he waved along the last of the evacuees toward the hill shelters. The fleeing Vintari were frightened but followed the evacuation procedure without panic. "Let's go, people!" he called. 

"The prison should be largely unguarded if Startol is busy attacking you," replied Case's tinny voice back over his comm. "This may be our only chance to get the prisoners out of there—if Tepai and Startol's plan to destroy the Resistance fails, they may decide to kill the prisoners rather than risk the Republic finding out about them."

"You don't know the camp is unguarded," he responded, eyes now on the shadow of the approaching attack force, still several klicks away. "Just you and Bastila against how many armed forces? That's not a plan—that's a suicide mission!"

Case's transmission was fading rapidly as her speeder went out of range. "Frack, Carth, if we don't get those people out of prison and get them to help us, everyone in the Resistance camp will be killed. We don't have a choice."

Carth could think of several responses pointing out Case's questionable logic, but he knew none of them would result in her returning to the camp. He clenched his jaw hard and then simply said, "Be careful. We'll be waiting for you when you come back." _Don't leave me again, beautiful._

He could almost hear her smile. "Force be with you, love," she said. "I'll see you soon."

"Admiral!" Limae called and Carth forced his attention back to the battle at hand. He jogged over to where she was standing with Tykhol, Gellan, and several armed Vintari. She reported in Vintari and then again in Basic for his benefit, "Royei and children go with Hala and three defenders toward last camp. We are ready."

Carth nodded, glancing again toward the horizon and the approaching force. Their plans to make a dual attack on the city were broken now, preempted by Startol's attack on them. All they could do at this point was keep as many fighters alive as possible and hope that Case would be successful in the city. It would not be an easy task. "All right, here's what we have. Those airships are just for support—they'll use the ships' heat sensors to find us under the tree canopy, but they won't risk killing all of us by using any of the ships' heavy weaponry—they want the Force users for their prison. Tykhol, you go with your squadron and make sure that the fires we set keep burning—we have to mask our heat signatures as much as possible."

Tykhol touched his forehead quickly to Limae's and then peeled away with a handful of Vintari. Carth saw Limae's headfur turn briefly gray, then back to its normal color. Carth continued, "Remember, sonic weapons first to disrupt their Force shields, then Force attacks. Use your weapons only as a last resort before falling back. We have three defensible positions to fall back to before we hit the last camp."

Limae glared at the troops. "No Force Heal," she barked. "Force for offense only. No surrender."

Carth saluted them. They knew failure would result in death or a prison sentence. "We have to win this one. Good hunting."

They broke into three groups of five and positioned themselves in the trees beyond the camp. From where he crouched, blaster ready, Carth could see Limae's group and the group of her second. Gellan kneeled beside him, eyes on the clearing through the trees. Carth noted with some concern the absence of fear in the young man's eyes. Fear kept soldiers alive.

Startol entered the camp with thirty other soldiers, glancing at the burning buildings suspiciously. Carth could hear the airships hovering above the high trees but as he expected, no attack came from above. The soldiers' speeders would be parked beyond the far clearing where the undergrowth became too thick for them to pass without a scout.

"Only thirty?" Gellan whispered beside him. "I thought we expected twice that many."

Carth nodded uneasily. There had been too many speeders for just thirty soldiers. "Some of them stayed behind or went around another direction," he whispered back. He spoke into his wrist comm, "Limae, take a couple of your team around to our flanks and make sure we're not being boxed in. I don't like the way these numbers look."

When he looked back up, Startol and his men were in position. Carth held a hand in the air and counted down on his fingers. When he made a fist, grenades flew from all directions to land amongst the attackers with loud pops. Shields shimmered orange and went down. "Now!" Carth shouted.

Chaos erupted as the soldiers fired in all directions to find the source of the ambush. The Resistance fighters threw shields of their own, along with the boulders and tree limbs they had stacked for ready Force projectile use. Startol's soldiers started to panic, especially when their fellow fighters were flipped off their feet or frozen into place.

Carth concentrated on ducking the blaster bolts that came his way and firing the occasional shot to keep the city soldiers off balance. He had never fought with so many Force users before, and it was pretty exhilarating. At this rate, the battle would be theirs before they even fell back to their first rear position. His soldier instincts whispered to him that this was too easy.

The soldiers stopped their fire, looking expectantly back to Startol. "Something's wrong," Gellan said beside him just as Carth's whispered instincts began shouting.

Through his binocs, Carth could see two Vintari coming out of the far clearing, backed by another twenty or thirty soldiers. The sun glinted down on the lead Vintari and Carth caught the flash of something metal around their necks. He realized a second later what was about to happen. "Fall back!" he shouted. "Fall ba—"

The air seemed to jerk around him and tighten into a wall that held all of his muscles frozen. He couldn't move, could barely breathe, and his words died in his throat. _Stasis_, he knew. Of all the damnable Force powers, nothing made him feel more helpless than a damn Stasis field. Around him, Carth saw Resistance fighters frozen as they turned to flee. Gellan was trapped in a Stasis field beside him, hand still out to throw another Force attack.

His headfur nearly black, Startol stepped into the center of the clearing. "Find them," he ordered his soldiers. "Put collars on them all and bring them back to the city."

_Damn, damn, damn,_ Carth cursed mentally and tried to jerk himself free, knowing it was useless. Even Bastila and Case had a hard time getting out of Stasis fields—these half-trained Force Adepts didn't have a chance. They were trapped.

* * *

Bastila was flat on her belly in the tall grass, watching the city walls through the binocs. There appeared to be four sentries on duty, one on either side of the wide gate and two who circled the perimeter every fifteen minutes or so. 

"Well?" Case asked impatiently. "Can we get in or not?"

Bastila relayed the sentry situation, ignoring Case's brusqueness. She knew it was hard for the woman to rely on others for basic things like holding and adjusting the binocs. "We should be able to enter the city without much trouble," she said. "But we must do it without alerting them inside."

Case grinned, clenching and unclenching her fists. "That should be no problem for a couple of old hands like us, right?"

Case Boosted them toward the city, keeping them moving too fast for the gate guards to see. Before the guards even had time to shout, Case wrapped them in Stasis fields and Bastila finished them with her blade. Bastila took a brief moment to mourn their deaths—they could not afford to leave them alive to be found, but the guards no doubt had families and friends who would never see them again.

By unspoken agreement, Bastila went left around the building while Case went right. She kept close to the wall and lightened her step with the Force, feeling ahead for the sentry. She kept bouncing against his Force shield and so she nearly ran into him as she turned the corner. He got a quick shot off that she barely had time to block before she impaled him with her blade. Bastila followed the wall around to find Case standing over the other guard. The Vintari was obviously dead.

"How did you do it without your blade?" Bastila asked, almost dreading the answer. Light side powers were largely defensive, and to attack, Case would have had to use a Dark power.

Case raised an eyebrow. "With a rock," she said dryly, levitating one nearby to demonstrate.

Bastila flushed and continued past Case toward the gate. Even after all this time, she questioned Case's motives. Perhaps she should spend more of that time examining herself instead of suspecting her colleague. They arrived at the gate and Bastila looked up at it thoughtfully, trying to determine the best way to get in. She had thought she could jump it with the Force, but looking at it towering above her, she wasn't sure she could.

Case walked around her to the center of the gate. "You know, they say that Revan used to be able to walk through walls," she said, looking closely at the latch.

"That is ridiculous," Bastila scoffed. "The Force isn't magic."

A spark leapt from Case's hand and the lock clicked open. "Well, it takes a lot of energy, anyway," she said. She winked at Bastila and pushed open the gate. "After you."

Bastila slid around Case and entered the courtyard. It was a short walk to the compound. She was gratified to see half of the speeders that had been there before gone. It meant at least some of the guards were no longer here. "Remember that they can detect use of the Force," she whispered to Case. She extended her Force senses very tightly around her and reached just into the other side of the compound. Finding no one inside, she palmed open the door and walked into the cool hallway.

The feeling of oppression from tens of collars came at her from all sides, and Bastila had to force herself to keep walking. _I am not a prisoner here_, she repeated to herself. They passed the collection rooms and made their way to the end of the hall where the first of the holding areas was located. They passed only one Vintari along the way, easily dispatched.

Bastila glanced in the window and saw no guards in the room where she had been a prisoner only two weeks before. She sliced the lock with her blade and entered the room with Case close on her heels. There were eight sentients in the common area and Bastila sensed two more down the hall in the living quarters.

"Ready?" Case whispered behind her. Bastila nodded. Case stepped forward. "Okay, listen up, people," she said loudly. The sentients glanced up at her. "We're here to rescue you, but we need your help to get out of here. When we get your collars off, you can either come with us and help us rescue the rest of the prisoners here, or you can run for the door in the east end and try to make it on your own. You're much less likely to die if you keep with us. Everyone got it?" Case concentrated, and Bastila could feel her drawing the Force to her, then releasing it in a strong burst. With a pop, all the sentients' collars came open.

Smiles and looks of wonder crossed the sentients' faces as the Force came back to them. Bastila stretched her Force senses and felt the beginning of alarm somewhere in the compound. "We must leave," she announced to the room.

"Okay, let's go, everyone." Case started toward the door, then stopped when she realized no one was following her. She shot Bastila a puzzled look and turned back to the room. She repeated her explanation in Twi'leki, Huttese, and Vintari, but no one moved. "This is a problem," she muttered to Bastila.

Bastila looked around the room and saw the apathy and resignation on the sentients' faces. She bit her lip, realizing what was wrong with their plan—they had thought that the prisoners would welcome the chance to escape, but Bastila had forgotten—how had she forgotten?—the utter hopelessness and dejection that the constant taking of the Force created. These sentients barely had the will to live, much less escape. Hadn't she been in this very place days before? Hadn't she been ready to give up herself?

She spotted Sabanyl across the room, the Twi'lek who had won her rations in pazzak three days running. "Sabanyl," she called, "you have not given up, I know. Remember when I left, after they took Gellan? Remember that we did not come back? We escaped, Sabanyl, and you can escape, too. But only if you come quickly. We cannot stay much longer."

The Twi'lek blinked, as though coming awake, and recognition crossed her face. "I—I don't know, human. They'll kill us if we leave."

Case looked out in the hallway, then back inside. "Bastila, we have to move. If these sentients won't come with us, we have to try another room."

Bastila knew they had to leave, could feel the fear rising along the back of her neck. She could not let them capture her again. But she couldn't just abandon these prisoners. "Sabanyl, please," she said. "You'll die if you stay, you know that. You're safer with us." No Persuasion, no Force, just the determination in her voice.

The moment dragged on forever, and then, "Yes. I will come with you." The Twi'lek yanked the collar off and let it drop to the ground.

Bastila smiled. "Come quickly," she urged, following Case out of the room, Sabanyl and two other prisoners behind her.

They had more success in the other rooms, finding more recent and less resigned prisoners. Their group grew from four to ten to fifteen, including two young padawans the Order had classified as deceased. The crowd trailed Bastila and Case down the long hallway toward the exit.

They had almost reached the exit when Case jerked to a halt and threw up her arms, projecting a shield around the entire group. A second later, a storm of lightning flew at them, seemingly from nowhere. Bastila startled as the energy crashed into Case's shield with a deafening pop. The shield held and Bastila could feel stray hairs stand up on her head as the energy crackled harmlessly around them.

The Force sensitives muttered amongst themselves. Bastila frowned and stretched her Force senses forward to find the source of the attack. It was close and coming closer, but it was far more powerful than she had expected. She glanced at Case, who was warily lowering the Force shield. "That was more than Tepai could do," Bastila said.

Case nodded, eyes still on the hallway before them. The exit was only fifty meters away, but Bastila knew the prisoners would be vulnerable outside in the courtyard if Tepai had soldiers waiting for them. "That was a master-level attack, and Tepai isn't sufficiently trained for that. Something odd is going on here," Case said. She raised her voice. "Okay, people, here's what we're going to do. There are speeders outside the door in the courtyard--on my mark, run for the door, and don't look back. We'll be right behind you. Now go!"

The prisoners made for the door ahead with Case and Bastila following more slowly behind. Bastila could feel Tepai getting closer and she held her breath as one prisoner after another slipped through the doorway. Just three more. . .two. . .one. . .

"Look out!" the last prisoner shouted, skidding to a halt just outside of the building. Over his shoulder, Bastila could see Vintari soldiers gathering in the courtyard, surrounding the prisoners. Bastila ignited her lightsaber, but the door slammed shut before she reached it. She tugged it futilely, knowing it was sealed with the Force.

She was trapped again. Terror gripped Bastila's throat as she turned to face the hallway. Case stood next to her, hands glowing with the Force and projecting improbable calm. "We've gotten out of worse, Bas," she said. The woman glanced at her and grinned, but Bastila could feel the desperation under the bravado, the worry for the prisoners outside. Case feared this place, too.

Tepai emerged from around the corner, accompanied by two Vintari in collars. Case threw a strong Force Push that knocked the collared Vintari over, but it slid around Tepai. The Vintari smiled minutely. "Greetings, Bastila Shan, Case Lanatal. I did not expect to see either of you so soon."

Bastila saw the Force collection cube in Tepai's hands. The two Vintari prisoners got to their feet and stood protectively in front of her. "She's taking the Force from those two Vintari and using it herself," she said quietly to Case.

"Indeed," Tepai responded. "These two volunteered their power in defense of our people, like the ones who went with Startol to your camp."

Bastila jerked in a breath and heard Case do the same. The camp wasn't prepared for Force attacks, the adepts weren't powerful enough. . .

Tepai seemed to know what she was thinking. "I'm sure they have all been captured by now. Startol will kill the ones who resist. I hope you live long enough, Bastila Shan, to see me kill Gellan Mar."

Another blast of lightning came toward them, and Bastila hastily raised her hands to create a shield. Her shield was late, and the lightning found its way through to scorch her side. She hissed, but the pain seemed to clear some of the panic from her brain. Bastila realized in that moment that she would not be a prisoner again. She would die first. The knowledge gave her strength, and she felt a grin to match Case's spread across her lips.

"Ready for this?" Case asked.

"Absolutely," Bastila replied.


	18. Chapter 17

**SEVENTEEN**

"And this is the end result of the latest genetic adaptations," Chodo Habat said as he pointed to the small plasynth container. Mission bent down to get a closer look and smiled as the small pink flower unfurled velvety petals.

"It's beautiful!" she exclaimed. She looked up over her shoulder at Habat. "And you say it can clean a hundred cubic meters of air a day?"

The Ithorian bobbed his head solemnly. "It is an important breakthrough. With this flower scattered across Telos, we can increase the rate of restoration by fifteen percent." The alien hummed in satisfaction. "Of course, we will need substantially more resources to produce the flowers." He pulled a datapad from his portfolio.

Mission suppressed a grin as she stood back up and glanced through the datapad. As usual, Habat had requested about twenty-five percent more resources than he actually needed to do the job. The TRP budgeting committee would claim he could do it for twenty-five percent less than he actually needed. It was her job to get the right amount of resources to put the flowers in the ground. "Well, I'll see what I can do, Ambassador. You know that the committee is pressing us for—"

"Facilitator Valenta?" someone asked behind her. Mission turned to see one of the TSF guards standing in the doorway. At her nod, the guard continued. "You have two visitors, ma'am, from the _Ebon Hawk_. I—I think they might be Jedi."

Mission's heart leapt into her throat. She knew Carth had left with Dustil and the Exile on the _Hawk_ to find Case. For two Jedi to return without him. . .she cut off that line of thought. "Show them to my office," she said. She made her excuses to Chodo Habat and strode quickly to the administrative sector of the station. She hadn't even sat down at her desk when her door hissed open and two people came in.

Mission thought for a moment that Carth had walked in with a lightsaber hanging from his belt. But she blinked and realized it was Dustil she saw, not his father. He was accompanied by the Exile, who looked as cold as ever under her brilliant hair. "Mission," Dustil greeted her. "Or should I say, Facilitator Valenta?" He grinned. "I can't believe you married Jan Valenta."

"Where's Carth?" she snapped, in no mood for bantering. "What's happened to him?"

Dustil looked perplexed for a moment, then understood. "He's fine, Mission, don't worry. Didn't you get our message? He's on a moon at the edge of the Unknown Regions, with Case and Bastila." He held up a hand at her question. "There's no time to explain. We have to get down to the surface where you found those holocrons right away."

Mission ground her teeth. She hadn't seen Dustil in five years, and now he thought he could just walk in without explanation and order her around in her own office—clearly, he was as arrogant as he had ever been. But she would try to be at least polite to him for Carth's sake. "Come on, then," she said. "I'll take you down."

The shuttle ride was uneventful, and before long they were on the edge of the polar region and blinking into the bright glare. "The silo is about five klicks from here," she said.

"Great," Dustil replied. "Which direction?"

Mission smiled and crossed her arms over her chest. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

The Exile burst into laughter. "So much for your Omniscient Jedi act, kid," she scoffed. Mission's opinion of her went up a tiny bit.

"Look," Mission explained, "I know I wasn't born here, but Telos has become my home, too. If there's really something Dark going on down here, I want to know about it. And besides, if you two get your all-powerful butts kicked by some Sith Lord, I have to fill out a lot of paperwork."

Dustil sighed exaggeratedly. "Fine. There is a new kind of Sith, creatures who actually take the Force from others and use it themselves, like parasites. We think this silo of yours is a kind of collection center for the Force powers of a group of prisoners in the Unknown Region. If that's true, these new Sith will come here to collect the stores, and use the Force to get stronger. The collection centers are connected to each other, like an electrical circuit, and we think if we destroy the holocrons here, we can disrupt the circuit."

"But what if one of these Sith is actually at the silo?" Mission asked.

Dustil grinned fiercely. "Oh, I sincerely hope one will be."

The Exile tapped her foot. "Okay, good enough?" she asked Mission. "We need to get going."

Mission knew that they hadn't told her the whole story, and there must be some reason why Carth and Case had stayed behind in the Unknown Regions, but she thought they were telling her at least some of the truth. She pointed them northeast and tossed Dustil a datapad. "That will give you realtime updates from the satellite I have monitoring the silo. It will also connect you directly to my comm—if you run into trouble, I can have a TSF unit down here in twenty minutes."

"Aren't you coming?" Dustil asked. "We could use some blaster cover fire."

Mission smiled ruefully, thinking of the girl she had been on Taris, the reckless, indestructible one who thought she would live forever. The one who had no one to worry about her, and who had nothing to lose. Life might have been more exciting back then, but she wouldn't become that girl again for all the credits in the galaxy. "I'm afraid not, Dustil," she said. "But good luck."

Dustil looked like he might try to talk her into changing her mind, but nodded instead. "Force be with you, too, Mission," he said.

Mission watched Dustil and the Exile walk away from her onto the icy plain. She could still see their silhouettes when she turned and got back into the shuttle. "Okay," she told the pilot, "let's go home."

* * *

The Stasis didn't wear off until Carth was on a speeder with his hands in binders behind his back. They had been loaded four to a speeder, and most of the Vintari from the Resistance camp were too incapacitated from Force collars to even respond properly to commands. Carth knew that a physical rebellion was going to be impossible.

Startol was gathering the last of his men together and issuing commands in Vintari. It would not be long before they left the camp and headed back toward the city. Carth heard rustling in the speeder behind him and turned to see Gellan struggling to get his arms, in binders behind him like Carth, in front of his body. He didn't appear to be groggy from the collar like the rest of the prisoners, perhaps because he had been in one so recently.

"Don't bother with that," Carth advised. "You're too tall to get your arms under you and in front."

Gellan continued to struggle for another minute before giving it up. "I'm not going back there," he said, almost too low for Carth to hear. He looked up, and Carth could see the desperation on his face. "I'll make Startol kill me here first."

"Hey, calm down," Carth said quickly, worried that Gellan was going to try to get out of the speeder and make good on his threat. "No one's getting himself killed. It will take a few hours to get back to the city, and that gives us plenty of time to come up with a plan. We just—"

"Where are they, human?"

Carth looked up to see Startol coming toward him. The Vintari's headfur was an irritated dark gray. "Where are who?" he asked innocently.

Startol crossed the distance between them in four steps and struck Carth hard across his jaw. With his arms immobilized behind him, Carth had nothing to keep him from pitching almost out of the speeder. Startol shoved him upright and glared. "The other humans! The Jedi who seek to conquer us again. Tell me their plans."

Carth forced a smile to his face in spite of what felt like a couple of loose teeth. The small alien could throw a good punch. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said as falsely as possible. Carth knew that because he had no Force powers for the Vintari to steal, he had to give Startol a reason to think he could eventually get something valuable out of him. Otherwise, there was no reason for Startol not to kill him before they left the camp.

Startol narrowed his eyes. "We will see what you know, human." He shoved Carth back into the speeder and turned without another word to mount a nearby speeder. He gave instructions over his comm and the last of the soldiers mounted speeders and turned them toward the city.

Carth allowed himself a small moment of relief. He had bought himself a few hours, at least, but he had no illusions that they were safe. He knew that unless he could figure a way to escape or Case and Bastila were successful, he would be killed as soon as Startol realized he wouldn't cooperate, and the Force Sensitives would be consigned to a short life in prison before their own deaths. They didn't have much time.

The two Vintari soldiers in the front of the speeder were engaged in conversation and didn't seem to be paying attention to the prisoners in back. None of the soldiers, in fact, seemed experienced in handling a group of potentially dangerous prisoners. If Startol hadn't had the Force users with him, the Resistance probably would have defeated the attackers. Carth turned to Gellan and asked quietly, "Is there any way to work yourself out of that collar?"

Gellan smiled without humor. "You wouldn't ask, Admiral, if you had ever been in one. But I'll see what I can do."

Carth turned back toward the front and made a quick count of the prisoners in the speeders around them. He frowned and counted again. They were three short. He didn't think anyone had actually been killed in the fighting, so that meant someone had escaped or been left behind—he remembered abruptly his order to Limae just before the attack. He told her to take two people and check their flank for an attack in that direction. A closer look around at the speeders told him that she was, in fact, missing.

He twisted around as best he could in the binders to scan the horizon around them. Once in a while, he saw a flash of what might be a trailing speeder, but he couldn't be sure. As frustrating as it was to sit still and hope for a rescue, he had little choice in the matter. Carth tried to make himself comfortable in the speeder and hoped Case was having better luck than he was.

Night was beginning to fall when the group of speeders approached the city. Carth's frustration had evolved into full-out anxiety. There was no sign of Limae or of the prisoners from the city, which meant that either Case and Bastila had been delayed, or something had gone wrong with their plan. Either way, they had very little time left before arriving in the city. Carth turned to check on Gellan, who was bent over his knees with his hands still awkwardly behind him. He hadn't spoken to Carth at all since beginning to try to get out of the collar, and hardly moved, except when his body jerked from the shock of the collar. It was painful to watch.

"Gellan, we're close to the city," Carth whispered, one eye on the still inattentive Vintari soldiers.

Gellan lifted his head a few centimeters to acknowledge Carth's words. "I'm close," was all he said. He clenched his eyes shut and even someone without the Force could tell how intensely he was concentrating. The collar sparked and vibrated, and Carth made a show of coughing to cover the strangled sounds Gellan was making. Then, abruptly, the collar snapped open.

Carth looked quickly around to see if anyone had noticed the use of the Force. One of Startol's Force users looked back at the prisoners, then shook its head and went back to whatever it had been doing. They were clear. Carth breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to Gellan, who had straightened and was grinning in spite of the bloodied nose his efforts had given him.

"I hope you don't feel as bad as you look," Carth remarked with a grin of his own.

"I have the worst headache you can imagine," Gellan replied, "but it was worth it. I won't be collared again." He looked around, squinting into the darkness. "Any sign of the group from the city?"

Before Carth could respond, the comm crackled to life and a blur of Vintari syllables came across. Carth listened hard, trying to make out anything, and thought he heard the word "Jedi." He glanced back at Gellan, who was suddenly expressionless. "What?" he asked.

"Jedi Lanatal and Shan have been discovered and trapped," Gellan reported, not quite covering the dismay in his voice. "Tepai has gone to deal with them herself."

"Damn," Carth said quietly. _Gods, not again. _He wanted to take the speeder to the city by himself, run in with blasters firing, and rescue Case or die trying, but he knew he couldn't abandon the Resistance when they had trusted him to help them. He shoved his screaming fear for Case into a box and straightened. "All right. They're both powerful Jedi, and they may be fine. But in the meantime, we have to stop Startol and free the Resistance. We can make our stand just before we approach the city. Can you open all of the collars at once?"

Gellan responded to the implied order. "I think so. It might take a couple of minutes for everyone to recover from the collar's effect, but we should be able to—"

At that moment, a high pitched whine flew in from the group's left flank and Carth instinctively ducked. The prairie ahead of them burst into flames. The guards piloting their speeder shouted and skidded their vehicle to a halt. Gellan took advantage of the chaos to snap his and Carth's binders, then jumped out of the speeder to work on the other prisoners' collars. Carth jumped out of the other side and crouched briefly in the shadow of the wing, looking for the source of the attack.

A shadow materialized beside him and fired at the guards still in the speeder. They slumped over. Carth felt a blaster pressed into his hand and saw that the shadow was Limae. "We rescue," she said, grinning.

"Great timing, Limae," he replied. "Is it just the three of you?"

She shook her head. "Three younglings and Royei are waiting away. They come when we call."

Royei would be of help if they had injuries, but Carth couldn't risk the elder being killed in what was rapidly turning into a free-for-all. Blaster shots and shouts echoed through the now dark prairie, and Carth knew the casualties on both sides would be high. "We have to knock out their Force users first—take your best people with you and disable them. Then concentrate on the soldiers."

"Where you go?" Limae asked.

Carth smiled grimly. "I'm looking for Startol."

* * *

The tension across the narrow hallway was palpable. Bastila held her double blade away from her body, weight balanced on her toes to let her move in any direction. She could feel the anger emanating from Tepai and the cold amusement from Case. The two collared Vintari working with Tepai seemed oddly neutral, as though they weren't strongly aware of what was going on around them.

Bastila heard sounds of battle outside the building and knew that they would get no help from the prisoners they had just rescued. She and Case were on their own. She glanced to the side and nodded to Case. The intense months of searching for the Star Forge had taught them how to fight together, how to rely on each other even when there was no time to form a plan.

Bastila leapt toward the two Vintari, blade held high overhead. She ducked their Force Pushes to land between them and snapped the sides of her blade against them in two quick blows. Their shields held, but their concentration was broken, and the Force power that Tepai was draining from them stuttered. Bastila saw Tepai falter and Case quickly moved to engage.

Bastila was slow in deflecting one of the Vintari's Horror attacks, and she was momentarily paralyzed by crushing fear that came from all sides. The other Vintari raced toward her, a collar in its hand. The sight of the collar shook Bastila out of her stupor and she whipped her double blade into a Flurry. When the battle adrenaline cleared, she was standing over two dead bodies.

Case was busy deflecting Tepai's Force attacks and occasionally tossing an attack of her own to keep the Vintari off balance. Bastila couldn't figure out why Case hadn't closed with Tepai—Case couldn't hold a blade in her ruined hands, but she had other powers at her disposal. Then Case's words reached her.

"You can come back to the Light, Tepai," Case said. "Believe me, what you've done isn't unforgivable."

Bastila felt a surge of anger. What did Case think she was doing? Tepai had violated her again and again, humiliated her, treated her like an animal. What Tepai had done was worse even than what Malak had done to her, because it left her with no choice even to fall to the Dark side. How could that be redeemed?

Some of her anger must have reached Case, because the woman's gaze flicked toward her concernedly. She looked back to Tepai. "There isn't much time. You must choose now."

Tepai shook her head and threw another burst of Force Lightning. "Do you think you can stop us just by killing me, Case Lanatal? Do you think I am the only True Sith? The Sith who conquered my planet sought only strength and stability, no different than what your Jedi seek. That is why they failed, for how can one hand defeat the other? The True Sith are a belief, the choice of anarchy against order, of entropy against creation. We are chaos and we are eating your strength out from the inside."

Case continued to look contemplative. "We've been approaching this the wrong way, then," she said, almost to herself. She shook her head and yanked Tepai off her feet and into the air. "I won't give you another chance to turn away from the Dark. Tell me—"

Bastila felt the surge of power before she saw it. Tepai yanked on the Force powers of every collared prisoner, every Force user who had refused to leave, and Bastila gasped as they all joined the Force at once. Tepai swelled with power and let loose a nova of energy directly toward Case. It blasted through Case's shields and tossed her against the far wall.

"I have the power of thirty Force users, Jedi!" Tepai crowed. "You cannot stand against me."

Before Bastila could react, Tepai turned a hand toward her and destroyed Bastila's shields like they were wet paper. Tepai threw Force Drain, like reverse lightning, and suddenly Bastila found herself sprawled on the ground next to the dead Vintari. Tepai had taken all of her Force reserves.

Case struggled to shove herself upright but Tepai held up a hand and Force Drained her, as well. Case fell back to the ground.

"It was you, wasn't it?" Tepai asked softly, stalking toward Case like she'd forgotten Bastila was there at all. "You were the one who enslaved my people years ago. I should thank you, then, for giving me a reason to seek out the power of the True Sith. If it had not been for you, I never would have found the holocrons that showed the ancient philosophies, that showed me how to consume the Force. But now your Jedi Council is gone, and no one Jedi is strong enough to stand against me, not even you."

Bastila saw Tepai raise her hand again, and she knew that this time, Tepai would kill Case. She looked desperately around for something, anything that she could do, and her gaze fell on the dead Vintari, the Force collar still in its outstretched hand. Whispering thanks to the Force, she scooped up the collar and threw herself toward Tepai. Tepai turned at the last second and threw a blast of Lightning squarely into Bastila's chest. Bastila's scream was sucked away by the energy and her vision darkened, but momentum carried her against the small alien. As they both crashed to the ground, Bastila heard the collar click shut.

Tepai screamed and clawed toward something in her tunic. Bastila could barely move to see what she was doing. She saw Case pushing herself to her knees.

"The cube," Bastila heard Case say, but it was like she was hearing from a long distance, too far away to be of any importance. "Bastila!" Case repeated, and somehow Bastila knew what she was saying was important, but she didn't know why. "The cube!"

Case's words finally penetrated and Bastila realized that Tepai was reaching for the cube that she used to drain the Force. If she drew enough power to break the collar, they would be unable to stop her. As though underwater, Bastila forced her muscles to move and somehow got a hand on the cube. She shoved it away from Tepai's clutching fingers with the last of her strength.

Bastila rolled awkwardly off of where she had fallen onto Tepai and found herself on her back. Her chest burned where the Lightning had hit and she seemed to be having trouble breathing.

"Bastila, look out!" Case called. Bastila felt her lightsaber snatched from her unresisting hand and saw through dimming vision Tepai above her on her knees. The yellow blade glowed above her. She had no strength left to resist, and Case could not reach her in time. Tepai would kill her, after all.

Instead of the killing blow Bastila expected, Tepai grabbed Bastila's outstretched hand and shoved something into her through the Force, something like a memory, or a ball of Force power. It seemed to explode into Bastila's head, and suddenly Bastila couldn't tell whether she was herself, or Tepai. She could see herself, robes scorched and torn, on the ground at the same time as she saw Tepai looming overhead.

"Your memories," Bastila gasped, desperately trying and failing to shove whatever it was back to Tepai. "You gave me your memories." They swirled in Bastila's head and seemed to burn with cold ice. "How—why?"

"Remember, Bastila Shan," Tepai whispered. "We True Sith are like the ocean eroding the shore." She pulled Bastila's lightsaber blade inward through her own chest. While Bastila watched helplessly, Tepai fell to the ground and joined the Force. It seemed that the Vintari was smiling.

"Bastila!" Case called, but her voice was too far away for Bastila to respond. She heard Case crush Tepai's cube under her boot, and the rush of escaping Force power sounded simultaneously like the wind on the Dantooine plains and the breeze over a Vintari lake. Bastila smiled at the memories and finally let unconsciousness take her.


	19. Chapter 18

**EIGHTEEN**

"One of these days," Atton announced, "the secret evil artifact that we're looking for is going to be at a nice inn on Coruscant. Just think, no one would look for it there! They'll be spending all of their time tromping around barren wastelands while we have a nice dinner and pick up the artifact in the morning. It's the perfect plan."

Dustil shoved his hair, stiff with frozen sweat, off of his face and kept walking. The icy landscape of Telos' polar regions stretched unrelentingly away from them toward the shadows of distant mountains. "Do you ever shut up?" he asked the ghost.

Pellek might have actually cracked a smile from the depths of her cloak. "He doesn't," she replied. "I think it's a Force power. What do you think, Atton? Force Chatter?"

Atton retorted, and Dustil tuned out the pair's banter. Pellek had been nearly uncommunicative since leaving Vintar, so he was glad to hear anything approaching good spirits coming from her. He knew they could both feel the pulsing malevolence from the silo a kilometer ahead of them, but they hadn't spoken of it aloud. Dustil was still grappling with the knowledge that his home planet was tainted by the Dark, was somehow part of a circuit of Dark places that fed these new Sith. To think that he and Case had been in the Unknown Regions for five years while this. . . _disease_ festered in his home was almost too much to bear.

Pellek's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Hey, cool it with the anger/grief/guilt, would you?"

Dustil glared at her and tugged on the Force connection between them. "I thought you said you blocked this thing," he said accusingly.

She tugged back harder than necessary. "I did, you ungrateful brat. You might remember that you'd be a Jedi corpse a couple of times over if we hadn't created this connection on Espol. And I seem to recall warning you that I don't know how to break them." She let the connection go slack. "But I don't need a Force connection to feel that baggage you're tossing around in your head. And if I can feel it, you'd better believe any Sith can feel it, too."

Pellek was right—indulging his emotions now was asking for trouble. He deliberately packed his anger away and concentrated on feeling the Force flow around them. Other than the hazy taint ahead of them, the Force flowing through the newly reborn planet was clean, and he let it clear his head.

"Speaking of Force connections," Atton said, "how'd Revan manage to rope you into a Force Bond with her, anyway? From what I've heard, five years of padawan training isn't enough to create a bond between master and student. And I can't imagine the Admiral was keen on the prospect of his boy and his girlfriend being Bonded."

Dustil shook his head. "It's a long story, but _Case_," he emphasized her name, "didn't force me into a Bond. I created it accidentally before we left for the Unknown Regions."

"You?" Atton scoffed. "That's not something baby Jedi know how to do."

Dustil didn't feel like explaining the circumstances of the power he took from the pool on Korriban on his first mission with Case. He glanced at Pellek, expecting to see similar disbelief on her face, but she just nodded and looked thoughtful.

Atton mimed nudging him in the ribs. "So, is Revan as. . ._formidable_. . .as she's rumored to be?"

Dustil deliberately ignored the innuendo. "She's not some kind of god, if that's what you mean. She's just a human—a human who can kick your ass with a blade in her sleep, mind you, but a human, nonetheless. She has the same weaknesses as anyone else, for all that she's the strongest Force user I've ever met."

"You're stronger," Pellek said abruptly.

"What?" Dustil and Atton exclaimed simultaneously.

Pellek shrugged. "I've had Force connections with you both, and you're stronger in the Force than she is. You're not as experienced, of course, but that comes with time." She grinned darkly. "If you were Sith, you would have killed her by now and taken her place as Sith Lord."

Atton snorted. "I think you'd better change your name if you go Dark, kid. Darth Dustil doesn't exactly have a menacing ring to it."

Before Dustil could respond, the Darkness in the Force ahead of them shifted, like the bottom dropping out of a barometer. Atton stumbled and went nearly transparent.

"Atton!" Pellek exclaimed, reaching out a hand fruitlessly to help him.

Atton caught himself and raised an unsteady hand to his head. "Sorry, babe, but I think Big Bad just arrived. I can't manage to hold this—" he faded to nearly nothing. "Don't do anything stupid, okay?" he asked, forcing an obviously false grin. "I prefer you corporeal." He disappeared from view.

Dustil lit his lightsaber. "Are you going to be all right?" he asked Pellek.

She took a breath. "Yes," she said shortly. "Let's finish this."

Dustil Boosted them both close to the silo. Pellek pulled her blade and started to close the distance, but Dustil held her arm. She glanced at him irritably. "What?"

"Open the Force connection between us," he said, eyes on the silo in case the Sith emerged.

Eagerness flashed across her face for a second, but she shook her head sternly. "Dustil, this isn't a joke. If I open that connection, I will use the Force through you. I can't—"

"Stop," Dustil finished for her. "I know. Look, Pellek, we don't have time for this. We're going to need all of the Force attacks we can spare if we hope to defeat this Sith. Just do it and we'll figure out how to stop it after we're done here."

Pellek closed her eyes briefly and tugged on their connection, and Dustil could suddenly feel her presence on the other side of it. As it was on Espol, her aura was blue but curiously empty, without a powerful tie of its own to the Force. He could feel her pulling at his own aura like someone who had been without water in the desert. He shielded himself lightly against her reach, just enough to protect himself from her grasping desperation.

She turned away from him, flushing. "Sorry," she muttered.

Dustil forced himself not to flinch from the connection between them. It wasn't as powerful as a Bond, after all, and he was well used to sharing the Force with Case. And for all that Pellek claimed to be a Force parasite, not giving anything back to those with whom she made connections, he could feel a thin flow of the Force from her. It wasn't much, but it was there. He wondered what that could mean—

"Watch out!" Pellek shouted.

Dustil looked up just in time to block a burst of Lightning on its way to his head. _Pay attention, Dus_, he berated himself. He squinted into the bright whiteness ahead but didn't see anything. Then, remembering Espol, he looked through the Force and there saw the enormous shadow of the Sith, only meters away.

_You come to die, Jedi_, it hissed nastily, its meaning clear through the Force. The Sith was cloaked in black and had somehow used the Force to blur itself into the background, as though it barely existed at all. Unlike on Espol, however, the ambient Force of Telos was clean and neutral, and Dustil could see the Sith more clearly. There was something inside that cloak, which meant they could hurt it physically if they could get through its shields.

Dustil bared his teeth. "Not today, Sith." He leapt high into the air toward the Sith, then used the Force to jerk himself sideways before he reached it. He sent a ball of Force Lightning directly into the Sith's chest while it blocked a strike from Pellek. The Sith's shield flickered orange and it shrieked wordlessly at them.

"Give me an opening," Dustil shouted to Pellek, his words almost unnecessary as the Force connection synchronized their movements. He felt her pull on his Force reserves as she set a series of Stasis traps around the Sith. While it wasted precious time dismantling the traps, Dustil ducked in and made a clean blow across the creature's midsection. The shield flickered again, then dissipated.

The Sith, finally free of the traps, sent a burst of energy away from itself, knocking them both backward. _You are no match for our power,_ it hissed, but Dustil could hear the fear in its words.

Dustil rolled to his feet and started toward the Sith again. "You're not as strong as you think, are you?" he taunted. As he said the words, though, he wondered why that was so. He and Case had both been beaten by this Sith on Espol—why was it so weak now? Perhaps it needed followers, the smaller Sith that had been with it before. Something about that explanation wasn't right, though, and Dustil knew it.

The creature hissed and threw Force Drain his way. Dustil easily ducked the attack and then stepped to the side to allow Pellek to throw a Whirlwind at the Sith. The Sith blocked most of the attack, but Dustil Boosted himself directly at the creature while it was distracted and drove his lightsaber deeply into its chest.

The Sith fell backward into the open silo behind it. Its scream was like an absence of sound, like negative space across the sky. Dustil involuntarily leapt away and had to consciously stop himself from blocking his ears. The oppressive Darkness of the creature fell away, leaving only a faint stain behind.

Dustil hauled himself to his feet and started cautiously toward the silo, battle adrenaline still filling his chest. Pellek stood several meters away with her blade defensively in front of her. Dustil ducked his head to enter the silo, blinking into the gloom, and held his blade out to light the small space. The green glow cast eerie shadows across the rounded walls. The Sith was sprawled on the floor, motionless. "It's dead," he called to Pellek, "or pretty damn close."

He heard Pellek running toward him. "Dustil, wait!" she called urgently. "The holocrons!"

Before he could acknowledge her words, the six holocrons sprang to life around the room. White light exploded out of them and into the Sith on the ground. The holocrons took up a round of hissing, their echoes magnifying as they bounced off the metal walls. The Sith seemed to expand, filling the room with a dark stench.

Dustil backed up, turned to run, but it was too late. A wave of energy picked him up and flung him twenty meters away onto the frozen grown. He landed hard on his left arm and screamed as the bone snapped in half. Lightning followed the first wave before he could raise a shield, and he writhed helplessly on the ground. The world grayed out around him.

"Dustil!" he heard faintly from Pellek. Her presence through the Force connection was enough to bring his senses back into focus. He knew he couldn't get to his feet, but he would at least face the Sith as it came to finish him off. He forced himself onto his back and saw the Sith gliding toward him, its power distorting the air around it.

_Now you die, Jedi_, it hissed.

* * *

Carth ran toward Startol's speeder, bent over at the waist to present less of a target to the blaster shooters. Someone had thrown a smoke grenade that filled the space between the speeders with a dense gray fog that obscured sightlines and sounds. Friend or foe was impossible to distinguish until you were within centimeters, already too late to avoid a confrontation. It was an incredibly dangerous scenario, particularly for amateur, angry fighters like the Resistance members. Carth hoped that if he could capture Startol, the rest of the Vintari force would surrender and bloodshed could be minimized. 

He thought he could hear Startol's voice ahead of him, shouting. He held his borrowed blaster ready and sped forward, but he tripped over something and crashed to the ground. Carth hastily rolled to his feet and saw that he'd tripped over a body, one of the Resistance members by the clothing. The Vintari groaned weakly. Casting an anxious glance toward the sound of Startol's voice, Carth turned back and bent over the Vintari.

It was Tykhol, Limae's mate, and he was badly injured. His hands covered a deep vibroblade wound between his ribs, and from the amount of blood on the ground, Carth was sure the wound went all the way through. Without a medpak, the Vintari would certainly die. And there were no medpaks to be found.

Carth leaned down. "Tykhol, can you hear me?" He knew the alien didn't speak Basic, but he wanted him to know someone was with him.

Tykhol's eyes focused with effort on Carth. He said something in Vintari that Carth didn't understand, followed by "Limae."

"I'll try to find her, Tykhol, but you have to hang on, all right?" Carth was afraid he wouldn't have time to find her in the chaos before Tykhol died. He didn't want Tykhol to die alone.

A Vintari in resistance dress ran by and Carth grabbed the runner's arm. "Hey, you!" he shouted. The Vintari tried to jerk away before recognizing Carth, but then dropped to its knees beside him. It was one of the younger camp members, female, but Carth couldn't place her name. She bent over Tykhol and said something to him urgently.

Tykhol's eyes were glazing over and Carth knew they had run out of time. "Heal," he said to the runner. "Can you Heal with the Force?" The Vintari looked at him blankly and Carth cursed the language barrier. He placed his hand above Tykhol's wound in an imitation of a Healing gesture. "Force Heal," he repeated.

The Vintari seemed to understand him, but when she placed her hand above Tykhol's chest, it glowed only for a moment before fading out. She looked up at Carth and gestured helplessly. He didn't know if she didn't have sufficient skill for Heal or if she was out of reserves, but her efforts hadn't even stopped the bleeding.

Carth stood in spite of the blaster fire around him and looked through the smoke for any sign of Limae. "Limae!" he shouted. She could be anywhere. He started back in the direction from which he had come.

"Admiral," the Vintari with Tykhol called in garbled Basic. He turned back to see her gesturing furiously at Tykhol. The Vintari was gasping for breath, his head fur a sickly off-white color. Tykhol was holding a hand out toward Carth.

Carth looked around him one last time for Limae, then dropped back to his knees next to Tykhol. He took the Vintari's outstretched hand. He'd done this before, and it never got easier. "We're winning, Tykhol," Carth said quietly. In truth, he had no idea what was going on in the chaos around him. "Your people will be safe. Limae will be safe."

Tykhol mouthed something that never turned into words. His eyes closed.

The Vintari who had tried to Heal Tykhol bent down and touched her headfur to his. She put a hand briefly on Carth's shoulder and said something solemnly in Vintari, then got up and disappeared back into the now-dissipating smoke.

Carth pulled Tykhol's body into the shadow of a nearby speeder. It wasn't a good solution, but it was all he could do. He saluted the dead Vintari, then started back in the direction he had been heading to begin. He couldn't hear Startol's voice anymore, and in fact, it sounded like the chaos was beginning to subside all around him. He didn't know yet whether that was a good or bad sign.

He finally reached Startol's speeder. The first thing he noticed were all of the casualties around it. At least ten Vintari soldiers and half that many Resistance members lay on the ground or across the speeder, all with significant wounds, all dead. While Carth had been tending to Tykhol, it looked as though the Vintari soldiers had made their last stand here, around their leader. And it appeared that the Resistance had won the day.

Carth's momentary elation was dampened when he noticed Startol himself. The Vintari was on the ground, unarmed, and still alive. Gellan was standing over him with his boot across the smaller alien's neck. He had a blaster aimed at Startol's head.

"Gellan, stop!" Carth shouted.

Gellan didn't look away from Startol. "Stand back, Admiral," he warned.

"Gellan, we've won. We don't need to kill Startol. He has nowhere to go." Carth glanced warily from Startol's helpless figure to Gellan's stiff form. He knew barely-contained rage when he saw it, and he knew any wrong word from him was likely to result in Startol's quick death.

"I was in that prison for two years," Gellan said in a low voice. "I watched everyone around me die like an animal, used up and thrown away." He pushed his boot harder into Startol's throat, eliciting a strangled gasp from the Vintari. "He deserves to die!"

Carth thought about Case's ruined hands, about the weeks she had spent alone as a prisoner on Vintar, and his hand clenched his blaster. But he also remembered looking down at Saul on the _Leviathan_ and the emptiness that stayed with him afterward. He sighed and unclenched his hand. "You're right. He does deserve to die. But not by us. His people have to make their own decision, in their own legal system. Don't give into the Dark side, Gellan."

"Bastila and Case might be dead and you're arguing about due process!" Gellan shouted. His finger tightened on the blaster trigger, but Carth saw his hands shaking.

"I'm not a Jedi. But believe me when I tell you that killing Startol isn't going to help. Let him go." Carth took a gamble and stepped forward, putting a hand on the outstretched blaster. Gellan didn't back down for a long moment, then jerked away with a frustrated growl and tossed the blaster to the ground.

Carth breathed a quick sigh of relief and hauled Startol up by his shirtfront.

"My thanks," Startol wheezed.

Carth cracked the small alien across the jaw and shoved him into the speeder. "I'm didn't do it for you, you son of a schutta. You're coming with us to the city." He looked up and waved Gellan into the speeder. "Come on, we have to finish this."

The yellow-green glow of the gas planet cast odd shadows as they approached the city. Carth checked again to be sure Startol was still secure in binders behind him, then rummaged under his seat and came up with a set of binocs. He could see a flicker of yellow light behind the heavy gates in front of the prison. He handed the binocs to Gellan. "Something's on fire back there. We'll have to be careful." He hoped they weren't too late.

He stopped the speeder in the gate's shadow and swung down. Carth grabbed Startol by the collar again and put his blaster to the Vintari's head. "You make one wrong noise and I'll shoot you before it's out, got it?" he hissed. Pushing Startol before him, Carth and Gellan made their way quietly to the gate.

"Put in the code," Carth ordered, then saw that the gate was unlocked and ajar. He pushed Startol back to Gellan and carefully eased around the opening. The light from a burning speeder momentarily blinded him, and he blinked rapidly to clear his vision.

The courtyard was littered with Vintari soldiers. The smell of blood was in the air, and it looked like whatever battle occurred here had only recently ended. A dozen or so white-clothed sentients formed a huddled mass on the other side of the courtyard from the bodies, a few looking at their hands like they couldn't believe what they had just done. Carth didn't immediately see Case or Bastila and feared the worst.

"Carth!" he heard. He looked through the courtyard to see Case leaning in the doorway to the main building.

Leaving Gellan and Startol at the gate, Carth ran across the courtyard and enveloped Case in his arms. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she replied, voice muffled against his chest. He pushed her to arms' length and saw the paleness of her skin and the scorchmarks from Force Lightning across her clothes. She laughed at his doubtful expression. "I am. Or I will be in a few days." She glanced around him. "Who's with you? Is Royei here?"

"Why? Who needs a healer?" Carth asked.

"Bastila!" Gellan exclaimed, striding past Carth and Case to a prone figure on the floor inside the building. Bastila appeared to be unconscious, but she rolled her head back and forth, eyes flickering rapidly under her lids. She was muttering words, some in Basic, others in what almost sounded Vintari to Carth's ears. Gellan kneeled down next to her and grabbed her seeking hands. She held on to him, but didn't seem to know he was there. Gellan looked up at Case. "What's wrong with her?"

Case shook her head, worry thinning her lips. "I don't know, to tell you the truth. She's been like that for about an hour, since we defeated Tepai. Tepai did something to her, but I don't know what it was."

With a jolt, Carth remembered Startol and spun around, looking for him. His hands still bound behind him, Startol was crouched down next to another prone form, his head pressed to the other's headfur. A low keening came from him.

Carth glanced at Case and she nodded. "Tepai. She killed herself on Bastila's blade." Carth looked back at the broken Vintari and couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Death by Gellan's blaster would have been kinder, after all.

He sighed, exhaustion replacing battle adrenaline. Carth held Case against him for another moment, then stepped away and squared his shoulders. He saw Case do the same and he smiled wearily at her. "I'll get Royei and the others," he said. They'd won the day, but the cost had been high. He glanced back at Bastila, her head now cushioned in Gellan's lap. And there was still more to do.

* * *

"Dustil!" Pellek shouted. Dustil was still sprawled motionless on the ground where the Sith had tossed him. He was too far for her to reach before the Sith did. Steam rose around his body from the Lightning attack, but Pellek could tell from their connection that he wasn't dead. He must have heard her, because he turned over, but Pellek knew that he couldn't defend himself. The Sith would kill him. 

"Atton, how could you leave me alone now?" she whispered. She knew what she had to do, but it terrified her. She reached for the Force connection to Dustil, then drew away, hesitant.

_No time_, she seemed to hear. Whose voice, she wasn't sure—she had so many ghosts around her. But it was right. It was now or never. She steeled herself and reached through the connection to Dustil, pulling as hard as she could on his Force reserves. She felt his surprise and fear and brushed away his weak attempt to raise a shield against her. She pulled the Force out of Dustil and into herself, imagining herself getting larger and brighter as she filled up with his power. She could do anything, defeat anyone, control whatever she wanted.

Pellek opened her eyes and hastily slowed her drain. Dustil was barely conscious now, so she sent him a little Force Heal back through their connection. She had more Force reserves now than at any time since Malachor. She hoped it would be enough to do what she had to do.

"Sith!" she shouted. When it turned, she let loose a Force Wave followed by a Stasis Field. She didn't think she could beat the creature with just Force attacks, certainly not just the Lightside attacks that she could muster. But if she could draw its attention from Dustil—

The creature shrieked as the attacks hit its renewed shield and it turned toward her. She deflected the Lightning it threw and relit her lightsaber. It glowed palely against the ice, fueled by the crystal Kreia made for her months ago. "Can you fight?" she yelled at the Sith.

The Sith Boosted to her almost too quickly to see. Pellek spun her blade in a Flurry, deflecting the Sith's burst of Lightning attacks. She tossed Force Pushes like punches at the creature, all the time moving toward it and forcing it to move backward.

The Sith hissed at her. _You waste your power, Jedi_, she heard through the Force. _You will kill the boy for nothing_. Pellek let her concentration slip as she quickly checked Dustil's status—he was still alive—and Lightning singed her side. The Sith laughed. _You will join us_, it said.

Pellek checked her reserves and knew that she was couldn't keep up her attack forever. The Sith, pulsing with the power of the holocrons' stolen Force energy, was easily deflecting her blows. If she let her concentration down for even a moment, she knew it would kill her. She knew she was finally at the end of her choices. There was only one thing to do now.

"It's the other way around, I'm afraid," she said, and reached for the Sith in the Force. She wrapped her hand around the core of its being and tugged, pulling it toward her. The Sith realized what she was doing at the last moment and struggled to free itself, but it was too late. Pellek had already made the Force connection, and she was pulling the Sith into herself.

"Pellek, no!" she heard faintly, and opened her eyes to see Dustil staggering toward her, left arm cradled in his right. With a gesture, she brought up a Force shield around her and the Sith that she knew Dustil was too drained to break. He pounded on the outside, shouting. "Don't do this, Pellek!"

Instead of responding, Pellek merely closed her eyes again and concentrated on the flow of power inside of her. The Sith was shrinking, screaming, flailing itself like a fly trapped in a spider's web, but she knew it couldn't escape. She was more powerful than it. In her mind's eye, she watched the Sith until it shrank into a wisp of Darkness and disappeared.

Pellek was alone in her head. She could see the flow of the Force around her, stained oily and black from the Sith she had consumed, bluish gray from Dustil's power, and hints of blue and red from elsewhere. Strings of Force connection spiraled away from her toward those she still held—Dustil, Mical, Visas, Follani, and even non-Force users like Mandalore. She knew she could reach others, anyone else in the galaxy, just by willing it. She could bind them all to her, use their power for her own purposes.

"Now do you see what you are capable of, Exile?" a raspy voice asked. Pellek looked up to see Kreia standing before her. The old woman looked the same as she had just before Pellek killed her—ancient, angry, but full of expectation.

"You're not really here," Pellek said flatly. Kreia had never come to her as a ghost, and she didn't believe the old woman was with her now.

A smile quirked Kreia's mouth. "Am I not?" she asked. She waved her hand around the darkness surrounding them. "This is a place of your own creation, Exile. I am here because you want me here, because there is something you still need from me. It can still be done, Exile. You can still unclasp the stranglehold that the Force has on the universe."

"General, don't let her use you like this," Bao-Dur appeared beside her. His voice was soft, his eyes full of worry. "You know what she is, and she serves the Dark."

Kreia laughed. "I serve no one, mechanic! The Exile knows what is at stake—the Force subverts the will of sentients everywhere, does for them what they should do for themselves. It must be stopped. Only the Exile can do it."

Realization, so long in coming, finally reached Pellek. "The True Sith are a belief, you said. That's what you meant, wasn't it? You're not Sith the way Malak and Revan were Sith—you're a True Sith yourself."

"Anarchy will cleanse the universe," Kreia whispered.

Pellek called her blade to her hand and pointed it toward Kreia's ghostly form. How many times did she have to defeat the old woman? "You killed my friends," she growled.

"No, you killed them," Kreia snapped. "You insisted upon following the path of the Light and let the Force guide you when you should have been guiding yourself! You should have taken the Force from your weak friends, the Lost Jedi, and used them to command the galaxy, but instead you pitied yourself and attacked those who only wished to help you!"

Pellek remembered the look of terror on Master Vrook's face before he died. Perhaps this ghost of Kreia was right. "I only wanted to help," she whispered. "That's all I've ever wanted. I've done the right thing over and over again, but the wrong outcome keeps happening. I'm tired of all the death that follows the Light."

Kreia smiled. "Then let it go. Control your own destiny."

"General, you know better than that," Bao-Dur said urgently. "Following the Light doesn't mean that the Dark doesn't exist. But abandoning the Light won't help you!"

Pellek didn't know what to do. She had thought that she could absorb the Sith, but she believed it would kill her. She didn't expect to suddenly be trapped in her head with the ghosts of her past, demanding that she make a decision. She wasn't strong enough, she never had been—

"You have to choose, Pel," a third voice said. Atton sat cross-legged to her right, wisps of the Force trailing around him. "That's why you're here."

"Choose what?" she asked.

"You know," Atton replied flatly.

"What, I have to choose whether to destroy the Force? Right now, right here on Telos? That's ridiculous! I'm just a mediocre Jedi! I'm not important enough for this!" She could hear an edge of hysteria in her voice.

Kreia smiled. "The fool is right, my dear. Your ability to connect to people means that you have the power to undermine the Force. Join us and receive absolution for all the deaths you've caused in the name of the Force."

"That's giving up!" Bao-Dur snapped. "Life is hard, General. But the universe needs you in it, needs people who are still committed to doing good."

Pellek looked desperately at Atton. "What do you want me to do?" she asked.

Atton's eyes were as worried as Bao-Dur's. "I've always been on your side, Pel. I'll stand with you no matter what decision you make, but it has to be your decision."

In the swirling darkness beyond Kreia and Bao-Dur, Pellek thought she could see the ghosts of everyone she had killed, all the soldiers at Malachor, the Jedi Masters. They seemed to press around her, whispering, insisting she make a decision.

And suddenly, she knew what to do. She had to let go of the past, to stop her past wrongs from choking her present. "Kreia, I forgive you."

"What are you doing?" Kreia asked, alarmed. "Don't—"

"You say that I have to destroy the Force and let people decide their own fates, but that's just another way of deciding for them. Master Vrook told me was a danger to the Force, just by existing. Well, I won't be a parasite anymore, even if that means I can't feel the Force."

She reached out to the tendrils of the Force around her and gently pulled them away from her. She let the Darkness of the Sith she had defeated spill through her fingers and dissipate into the Force. With a small pop, she broke the connection to Dustil, filling the darkness around her with pale light. She looked at the old woman. "Kreia, I forgive you, but I won't be a tool." She snapped the ghostly line between them and Kreia disappeared. One by one, she broke all of the Force connections she had held so dearly.

The darkness around her had lightened to sky blue. "I've been hanging onto the Force through everyone because I couldn't bear the thought of being alone again. But that's not a real life, it can't be. I have to stand on my own again." She held in her hands two transparent lines. Atton and Bao-Dur. She looked up at the two ghosts, tears on her face. "I have to let you go, too," she whispered. "Thank you both for everything."

Bao smiled gently. "You don't need me anymore, General. You never did, really." She snapped their connection and he faded away.

"Atton," she began.

He grinned. "Don't worry, babe. My jokes were getting pretty old, anyway." There were tears in his eyes, too. He raised a hand to her cheek. "I'll always love you," he said. Pellek snapped the last line and he was gone.

Suddenly alone, she drew a shuddering breath. The Force swirled around her in the vast blue space, bumping up against her legs like ghostly kittens, but she couldn't feel it. She had freed herself from the Force. She let out a breath. "So this is it. It's over," she said to herself.

"It's not quite the end, you know," she heard. Pellek spun around to see Mira standing behind her, hand on her hip and smirking. "Or at least, it doesn't have to be."

"Mira!" Pellek reached for her and her hand passed through. She sighed. "You're just a ghost."

"What, that creep Atton gets to be a hero and I have to just be dead?" Mira laughed, her eyes sparkling the way they always did.

"You never appeared to me before," Pellek said. Her joy at seeing Mira dimmed. "You're just in my head, aren't you?"

Mira smiled. "Isn't everything? Look, I don't have a lot of time. I brought something for you." She held out her hands and dropped a small white stone into Pellek's.

The stone was cool and perfectly round. "What is it?" she asked.

"It's you," Mira replied, then laughed. "You didn't think you were _just_ a parasite, did you? You could feel the Force, just not as strongly as before. You've always been able to, even when you were exiled. You can again."

"But I don't want the Force!" Pellek protested. "I've caused too much harm."

Mira's face became serious. "You forgave Kreia, Pel, but you have to forgive yourself, too."

"After everything I've done—"

"Everyone can be redeemed," Mira said firmly. "You're not exempt from that." She held her hands over the small stone in Pellek's hand. "Think of this as a seed. You can let it grow, if you want. You can start over."

"Mira—" Pellek said desperately. "I'm so sorry—"

"I forgive you, Pellek Tran," Mira said formally, then grinned. "And forgiveness doesn't come easily to a bounty hunter. The past is gone, Pel. Let it go. Forgive yourself." Mira started to dissipate.

Pellek looked down at the stone in her hand, then back up to Mira. "Is this real? Are you—are you real?"

Mira smiled. "I'll be waiting for you, love." She faded away.

Pellek opened her eyes to find herself sprawled on the icy ground of Telos, Dustil bending over her. "Pellek!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were—"

Pellek pushed herself upright painfully. How long had she been inside her own head? "Dead? Dark? Sorry to disappoint you on both counts, kid."

Around her she could smell the cold air, feel the ice under her hands, but she couldn't sense the Force. She was alone as she had been after her Exile, but she felt curiously light, free. The burdens she had carried on her shoulders for fifteen years were still there, but she thought they weren't crushing her anymore. She could live with them.

Dustil was staring at her in a mix of confusion and awe. "Your aura—you used to be a void, a negative space. But now you're not. What—how—what did you do?

She smiled at Dustil's perplexed eyes. "I've let go." She got to her feet and helped Dustil to his, careful to avoid his broken arm and burns. "Come on, kid, let's get back to Vintar."


	20. Chapter 19

**NINETEEN**

Bastila was lost.

On some level, she knew that she was alive, probably somewhere on Vintar, hopefully not in enemy hands, but it was as though a heavy fog hung between herself and that world. Try as she might, she couldn't reach it. She drifted on a slippery film of memory, both hers and Tepai's, finding herself one moment in the shadow of a tortor tree on Dantooine, and the next overlooking a farm on Vintar. She couldn't seem to control the memories, couldn't seem to find herself among them.

She didn't know why Tepai had given her the memories, but she felt strongly that there was something she needed to do, something the Force wanted her to do. But she couldn't find her way in the fog of memories, and she wasn't certain she would recognize the thing to be done even if she came upon it. The Force had demanded so much from her already—she was afraid of what it would ask of her now.

Presently she was in the evergreen forests on Vintar near the Resistance camp. The air was cooler than she remembered it being, and the smell of snow was in the air. "Bastila," she heard as though from a long distance. She turned and saw Gellan striding toward her.

She smiled and held her hand toward him, then remembered their last conversation in these woods, heard the rejection in her own voice. She could not touch him without touching the Force, and then it would have her at its mercy. Bastila backed away into the shadows of the woods, trying not to see the confusion and sadness on Gellan's face. If she stayed here, in these woods, she would be safe.

The Force could not find her here.

* * *

"All right, that should be everything," Carth said. He pushed back from the comm console and rubbed his eyes wearily. He had spent most of the three days since the attack staring at the screen, sending reports to the Republic, fielding irritated questions from the Admiralty, and helping Limae convene the darjuki to deal with the fallout from the attack. The work was tedious and exhausting, but here was satisfaction in helping the people of Vintar resume control over their lives and government. 

Limae stood and moved away from the comm console. "My thanks for help, Admiral," she said in her now-familiar broken Basic cadence. Limae's headfur was an empty dull gray.

"Limae," Carth began. She had rebuffed his every attempt to speak about Tykhol.

She held her hand up quickly. "Now not time, Admiral. My mate with gods. Now time for work." She stood and made as if to go, then turned back to him. "My thanks for your honor to him," she said, then left the room before Carth could respond.

Carth looked after her for a long moment, then forced himself to his feet and back into the complex. He knew that work could only bury grief for a limited time, but he understood Limae's insistence on it. He was glad that she would have Follani to turn to later, when the grief roared back in.

If there was any good news on this interminable day, it was that he had heard finally from Dustil. He and Pellek were in the system and would arrive at the city within a few hours. Carth knew that something unusual had happened on Telos, but Dustil wouldn't explain, saying only that he and Pellek were fine and he would explain when they arrived.

He saw Case across the hallway and she waved him over. He could tell from the set of her shoulders that she was worried. "What's wrong?" he asked as he approached. "Is it Bastila?" In the three days since the attack, Bastila had remained unresponsive and agitated. Case and Gellan had attended to her almost continuously, but no amount of coaxing or searching in the Force seemed to help.

Case leaned against him for just a moment before straightening and crossing her arms over her chest. "Royei is in with her now," she replied. "I don't think—"

Royei emerged from the room with Gellan right behind her. The old Vintari's headfur was the greenish gray of sickness, Carth realized with some alarm. Case immediately placed a glowing hand on the elder Vintari's shoulder and held it there until Royei straightened. "Thank you, Case Lanatal," Royei said. "I did not realize how drained I had become."

"How is she?" Case asked quietly.

Royei sighed. "As we thought, Bastila Shan is deep inside of herself. Tepai's dying act was to transfer the essence of herself, her memories, into Jedi Shan. I have heard of this being possible, but I have never seen it done. Bastila will have to resolve the contradictions between herself and Tepai before she can return to herself."

Something about the flat way the Vintari spoke chilled Carth. "Can she?" he asked.

"I do not know," Royei replied. "Your Jedi would say perhaps that there is something the Force wants her to do, something that affects not only herself but possibly the Force. I am not sure she will be able to do it, both because the task is hard and because of who she is."

Case nodded as though she understood, but Carth shook his head in frustration. "Speak plainly, Elder. What do you mean? How long before Bastila recovers?"

Silence, then very quietly, "I do not know if she will."

Carth glanced sharply at Case and saw confirmation of Royei's words in her worried eyes. Gellan, who had stood by silently through Royei's explanation, turned wordlessly and went back into Bastila's room. He sat in the low chair beside the bed platform and took Bastila's unresisting hand in his own.

"We can't just give up on her!" Carth exclaimed. "We'll take her back to the Republic, find a medic there, or, or—maybe the Exile could help you—" he trailed off. Carth sighed, looking over Case's shoulder at Gellan's still form. "Can he help her?" he asked finally.

Case leaned against him again, this time giving comfort instead of seeking it. "Bastila has to come back on her own, but he can be here for her if she arrives. I hope that will be enough."

* * *

Bastila found that she could walk easily through the dense woods of Tepai's memory, that the Vintari knew these trees like she knew her own family. She emerged from the trees into a broad clearing with a small stone building at the far end. It was the home she shared with Startol when his duties did not keep him in the city, and Tepai knew the home as a place of love. Bastila blinked and found herself abruptly inside. Royei handed her a swaddled infant. Startol leaned over her shoulder to see the child, love and pride bursting from him. This was one of Tepai's memories, of course, but to Bastila it seemed no different than her own. _She_ was here, not Tepai. 

"What shall we name her?" Startol asked.

"Halla," she heard herself say. The child opened bright blue eyes and seemed to smile. Bastila could feel the Force flowing from the infant, strong and pure, untouched by alignment. The love she felt for the tiny Vintari was nearly overwhelming. "She is our people's future, Startol," she said in Vintari.

Caught up in the heady glow of love surrounding her, Bastila didn't realize immediately that the smell in the air had changed from clean snow to a smoky sourness. Her hands were suddenly empty. "Halla," she whispered, glancing around herself, terrified that her baby was gone, before recognizing the city of Vintar around her.

Another blink, and Bastila heard herself screaming as she raced to a fallen body. It was Halla, she knew, even though the child was now many years an adult. It was after the Children's Massacre, and Startol had been forced to kill his own daughter, their daughter. The blood from Startol's blade stained Halla's robes as Bastila tried to stop the flow with her hands. She knew it was hopeless, that her baby was already dead, but she couldn't stop her hands any more than she could stop the tears that poured down her face. Startol's arms encircled her and she felt his sobs join hers. "She was not herself," Startol whispered. "Halla was already gone."

There was a hole inside Bastila where Tepai's—where her—love for Halla lived. That hole seemed to stretch endlessly away from her in two directions, toward a place of sadness, and a place of power. Bastila knew that in the past, Tepai had reached for the power, desperate to do something that would stop the pain. She had thrown Startol's arm from hers and walked to the holocron they had found in the caves beyond the city. She had taken the power offered by the holocron, her daughter's blood still on her hands, and used it to defeat the invaders who had enslaved her people. Tepai had rejected the Force, which only offered the promise of more pain.

Bastila could feel the Force hovering around her, demanding that she make a decision. "What do you want?" she cried to the smoky sky. "What am I supposed to do?"

Only her own voice echoed back to her.

* * *

It was late evening when Dustil arrived at the Vintari city with Pellek. He couldn't see the soot that coated the courtyard, but the smell reached him ten meters away. His boots crunched on ashes as he made his weary way inside. 

"Pellek, I'm going to check in with Case before I hit the rack. Hopefully she can do something about this miserable arm of mine."

Pellek made no response, and when Dustil turned to follow up, he saw that she was already gone. He shook his head—the woman was as much a mystery to him now as she had been when he first met her on Dxun. He felt for Case in the Force and found her awake and alone in an empty office.

Case smiled tiredly when he walked through the door. She was propped up on a low bench with her head back against the wall. She held a hand out to him. "I thought I felt you come in. Your father will be glad to see you back here safely."

"Where is Father?" Dustil asked, squeezing her hand briefly and settling onto a bench across from her. "I thought he would be with you."

Case stifled a yawn and gestured toward a soundproof comm console where Dustil could see the silhouette of his father's form. "It's 0800 Standard on Coruscant, and the Senate Subcommittee of Something-or-other wanted another explanation of the battle here. Fortunately, the local government on Vintar has nothing but good to say about our efforts, but the senators have to hear that ten times before they'll believe it." She shook her head. "They're almost as bad as the Jedi Council."

"Well, the Sith did have that going for them. No bureaucracy."

Case snorted, then looked narrowly at him. "Why didn't you tell me you were injured right away? Let me see that arm." Dustil extended it obediently. "What did you do to it?" she asked.

"Let's just say I tripped about twenty meters at high speed. It's just cracked, and the kolto will fix it in another day or two, but if you're handing out the Force Heal, I'll take some."

Case held her glowing hand over his arm and Dustil saw that her fingers were still as damaged as when he had first seen them. The dull pain across the long bone in his arm eased as the fibers knitted back together. "I know you're useless at Force Heal," she said irritably, "but why didn't Pellek heal you? Carth said she came back with you."

Dustil flexed his arm a few times, testing the easy movement. "She doesn't have the Force anymore, Case."

"What? How?"

Dustil shook his head. "I don't understand it myself, but something happened on Telos after she defeated the Sith—and it was _she_ who did it, not me, let me make that clear—and she lost the Force, or gave it up. She says she never really had it after Malachor."

Case pursed her lips. "I need to talk to her. That is, if she'll see me."

"She might be more willing than you think. We didn't talk much on the trip back here, but I got the sense that she was thinking, not angry."

"Hmm," Case said. "Perhaps. But enough about that for now—tell me how things went on Telos."

Dustil filled her in on the events in the polar region. "The good news is that the silo on Telos is destroyed, and without Tepai collecting Force powers to send to the holocrons, I think we really did some damage to these True Sith. But we know there are others."

Case nodded. "The Unknown Regions is a big place," she said, looking at Dustil meaningfully. "You have to be good with a blade out there, and I can't hold one anymore."

Dustil realized what she meant. "You're not going back out, are you?"

She stretched out her ruined hands. "Royei can't do anything with them, and with the Jedi Masters gone, I don't think there's anyone who can. Hunting Sith is for the young, and that's not me, not anymore." Dustil could feel the sharp longing and pain through their Bond in spite of her wistful smile.

Dustil glanced sharply at his father's shadow in the comm room and then back at Case. It was apparent they had already discussed this, and Dustil was surprised at his irritation from the exclusion—after spending the last five years with Case, he wasn't used to hearing things secondhand. "But what are you going to do? Join the Officers' Wives Club? Take up knitting?" He couldn't quite keep the scorn out of his voice.

She ignored his tone. "I hear that a couple of Pellek's Lost Jedi are trying to remake the Order, begin a new Jedi Academy. There are Force Adepts here, not just Vintari but from all species, who could benefit from training—"

"They're too old," Dustil objected.

"So were you, if you recall, and you haven't turned out too badly. The way the Order has been doing things has to change, or we won't survive. I'm going to be a part of that change, whether they like it or not." Case grinned hard, and Dustil suddenly felt sorry for Pellek's new Jedi. They had no idea what kind of a windstorm was heading their way.

Case took Dustil's hand, and her love for his father echoed so strongly that Dustil knew she had to be projecting it at him through their Bond. It was her way of telling him that her decision was final. She was nothing if not practical, and even though he could still feel her longing for a place on the front lines, she knew she couldn't survive there. She had decided on a new path, one with Carth and the Jedi, and any might-have-beens were irrelevant. If he went back to the battle, he would be doing it on his own.

_Well, Dus, you had to grow up someday, _he said to himself. "The Unknown Regions won't be the same without you, Jedi Lanatal," he said with a smile. He knew she could feel his understanding through their Bond.

They stood at the same time. Case embraced him, then pushed him away. "I didn't expect to have a padawan, Dustil. I couldn't have asked for a better one. Good hunting, Jedi Onasi."

* * *

Bastila stared helplessly down at Halla's broken body, still trapped in Tepai's terrible memory of her daughter's death. This was where the past hinged for Tepai, where the choice she made determined her future and the future of her people. Bastila knew that this was just a memory, just something that Tepai had forced into her before she died. But it was important, somehow, and Bastila knew she had to do something, that she was being asked to make a choice. But she didn't know what to do. 

Faintly, a memory within a memory, Bastila saw Case's ruined hands holding her own on the _Ebon Hawk_. She heard Case's words, desperate yet hopeful. _Choose love, Bas_, she had said.

Before Bastila could do anything, the memory shifted again, and Bastila found herself again in the evergreen forest under Gellan's warm body. She could feel him strongly as their auras intertwined through the Force. She watched herself stop him before their lovemaking could climax, felt her hands brush away evergreen needles as though she could do the same to her own feelings. She heard her words, rejecting a future with him.

"You don't mean that," Gellan said flatly. "I can _see_ it in you. That's not what you want, Bastila."

Bastila caught her breath. Her own choice, her own hinge for the future. Could she choose the Force and allow herself to love Gellan, even with the temptation of Darkness at her window? Or would she turn away, as Tepai had done? What would have happened if Tepai had chosen differently, had chosen love instead of the emptiness?

_Choose love, Bas—_

She was again on Vintar cradling Halla's lifeless form, Startol grieving, angry, and terrified behind her. Her own anger, at Halla, at Startol, but most of all at the Force which had killed her baby, was overwhelming. Turning away, as Tepai had, would ease that pain, stop the grief, soothe her like the Force would not. Bastila knew now that the Force wanted her to reject Tepai's decision, to turn to the Force instead of away from it. But that decision would bring so much pain, so much grief. Bastila wanted more than anything to run away, reject the Force as Tepai had, and stop the pain and temptation toward Darkness.

"I don't want this!" Bastila cried. "Why do you ask it of me?" The Force had already taken so much from her—her parents, her childhood, her self-assurance in her powers and the power of the Light. How could it ask more of her now? What would it possibly give her in return?

_Choose love—_

Case's words echoed in Bastila's mind. Case had wrestled with the Force many times, but only seemed to reach peace after she found Carth. Was that really enough? Case said she stared at the Dark every day but chose to follow the Light. Bastila had to choose, for herself and for Tepai, whether she would turn away from the Force or embrace it. She couldn't change the past, but she could redeem Tepai's memory. This was the change the Force was asking her to make.

"All right," Bastila whispered. "All right."

Bastila turned to Startol and buried her face in his chest, surrendering herself to the grief that the Jedi claimed would lead only to Darkness, and allowed his love to wash over her as they sobbed for the loss of their baby. Startol's love was stronger than the Dark.

Again in the forest, Bastila looked at Gellan, at the hope and worry in his eyes. Love could lead to Darkness, as the Jedi masters taught, but it could also lead to the Light. She had seen that over and over again. "Gellan, I—"

The fog thinned before she could finish her words, drawing her away from the forest, from Gellan. She felt her chance to make a change slipping away. "No, wait!" she cried. "Gellan, don't leave—"

Hands clasped hers tightly. "I'm here, Bastila, I'm here."

She blinked and saw Gellan's dark eyes looking down at her. It was his hands around hers. Harsh light bled in around him as he bent over her prone form, and Bastila could hear voices beyond him. Was she herself again, or was this merely another memory? Was her chance to make a decision already gone? "Gellan," she tried to say, but it was merely a whisper. "Are you real?"

Gellan's relief washed over her. "You're the expert on philosophy, Master Jedi," he whispered back. "But I think we're both real." He smiled down at her. "I thought you were lost."

The whisper of Case's words reached her. _Choose--_

She couldn't change the past, but she would choose the future. She owed that much to Tepai, to the Force, to herself. "I was," she said. "But love brought me back." She laughed at Gellan's surprise and pulled him down into a kiss.

* * *

"Why did you do it?" 

Pellek glanced over her shoulder to see Revan leaning in the doorway to the aft quarters. That was the problem with not having the Force—people could sneak up on you if you weren't paying attention. "The Masters were right," Pellek replied, and went back to stowing loose items for liftoff. She didn't need the Force to know that Revan's eyebrows were skeptically raised. "After Malachor—what I did to the Force was corrosive, dangerous."

"It wasn't—" Revan began.

Pellek turned around finally and sat on the edge of her bunk. "—my fault," she finished. "I know. I didn't know that all those Force connections suddenly snapped would make a hole in the Force. I didn't know that my exile without the Force was the Force's way of protecting itself. I didn't know that when I thought I'd regained the Force, I was really just siphoning it from my friends. But ignorance can't be an excuse, Revan. We thought we were acting for the greater good, rushing in to save the Republic, but we created a greater evil even so."

Revan opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. "Then how do we decide what to do?" she asked finally. Pellek's first thought was that Revan was mocking her, but she saw the seriousness in the woman's eyes. It was the first sign of true respect that Pellek had seen from her in a long time.

Pellek shrugged and smiled. "I guess we just muddle through as usual and try to fix our mistakes. We can't all be saviors of the galaxy, you know."

"You're going with Dustil, then?" Revan asked. Pellek knew this was the real reason for the woman's visit.

Pellek nodded. "At least for a while. We have to try to wipe out these new Sith before they become too powerful—they were weakened when we destroyed the silo on Telos, but there are others. I don't know if I can be of much help in the battle without the Force, but I'm connected to them somehow, through Malachor, through Kreia, and I have to try to stop them. We have to bring some balance back to the Force."

Revan looked at her oddly, then smiled. "You sound like a Jedi Master making prophesy. You didn't see the Force ripple when you said that, Pel, but it did. I don't think the Force is done with you yet."

"Now who sounds like a Master?"

Revan laughed, and Pellek was reminded of better days. "See if you can find Dustil a nice girl to settle down with while you're out there, will you?" Revan asked.

"Only if I don't find her first," Pellek retorted. She smiled. "We'll keep each other safe, _Case_," emphasizing her name.

The former Dark Lord smiled. "I know you will. Force be with you, Pellek Tran." She turned without another word and left the cabin.

Dustil stuck his head around the corner into the quarters—Pellek suspected that he had been waiting for Case to finish before coming in. "Are you done in here?" he asked. "I'd like to get out of here before the Republic diplomats show up and turn this place into a circus. I don't envy my father or Case one bit, having to deal with that mess."

Pellek pulled her thoughts back from the conversation with Case. "Yeah, everything's stowed," she said, following Dustil back up to the cockpit. She settled into the co-pilot seat and strapped in. Dustil had already run most of the pre-flight checks.

Out of the viewscreen, she could see an assembly of people gathered to watch their liftoff. Limae was there, holding a furiously waving Follani in her arms. A little behind her was Bastila, still looking a frail but with Gellan's arm securely around her waist. Pellek thought Atton would have been glad to see Bastila looking so happy. Forming up the rear was Carth, who reached out a hand to Case, who approached from the _Hawk_. She said something to him and Pellek thought she could make out regret on the Admiral's face before draping an arm over Case's shoulder and turning back to the ship.

"Did you talk to the Admiral?" Pellek asked Dustil. "I thought he'd try to stop you from going back out there, especially with a derelict Jedi like me."

Dustil kept his eyes on the viewscreen. "He wanted me to stay, but we both know that there's not really a place for me in the Republic right now. Maybe someday I'll have to give this up and join Case's new Jedi Academy, but I have a lot of hunting to do first." He paused, then shook his head. "I'm just glad Case is staying with him. They both deserve some happiness. Though I wonder if Case realized her 'important Jedi destiny' was going to terminate in teaching a bunch of baby Jedi Force tricks."

Pellek chuckled. "How do you know it wasn't you?"

"What?"

Pellek raised her hands in mock surrender. "I'm just saying that maybe her destiny was to train you for the fight against the True Sith. I told you that you're stronger in the Force than she is."

Dustil looked genuinely surprised, then grinned. "Am I going to have to put up with all this wisdom from you the whole time we're hunting? You're worse than an oldtimer these days—next thing I know, you'll be telling me you've given up Corellian whiskey."

"Ha. Tell you what, I'll quit making wise pronouncements as soon as you learn your lazy ass some decent Force Heal. Especially if you keep insisting on breaking bones and getting into scrapes."

"It's a deal," Dustil said. He finished the final checks. "Ready to start this trip?" he asked.

Pellek looked once more at the group of people below them, then pulled the smooth white stone from her pocket. Mira would be waiting for her someday, but that day was not to be today. She tucked the stone away, feeling another tiny piece of her soul reassembling itself. "Just another four million to go," she whispered to herself. Atton would have known what she meant.

Pellek nodded slowly and smiled. "I'm ready."

**END**


End file.
